Given In
by itusedtobefun
Summary: "It's been a month since she has seen her and yet she is still a weight, a presence, a force that pushes at Holly. Hard. She looks tired, but beautiful. But she'll never stop being beautiful. She has the kind of face that is almost violent in its loveliness, even at its most faded and weary." A month after 507. Told from Holly's perspective.
1. Chapter 1

It's Gail.

Gail and Chris to be exact. They march into the lab and immediately take their self-appointed positions at a respectful distance from the table, arms folded across their chests, that same stance adopted by every cop who ever comes in here.

Holly pulls in a calming breath as she yanks the gloves further up her wrists, surprised to feel more disarmed by this sudden appearance of Gail than she felt the last time she saw her in this lab, after that long silence, when everything was still so raw and unfinished between them. And maybe it is because this moment finds itself strangely just as raw— if not more— than the last time. How can that be?

It's been a month since she has seen her and yet she is still a weight, a presence, a force that pushes at Holly. Hard. She grants herself a brief moment to privately take her in as Gail sweeps her own eyes around what must by now be a familiar room. She looks tired, but beautiful. But she'll never stop being beautiful. She has the kind of face that is almost violent in its loveliness, even at its most faded and weary.

The short hair still disorients Holly a little. She wonders if she will ever be entirely used to it. She forgets it even though it was she who cut it, in a tender live-saving operation performed in her bathtub on that night of nights that swooped down on them so swiftly after that day of days. The dramatic, fraught day that turned them from a half-formed, barely-ready-to-be-spoken-out-loud possibility into a tangible, concrete, and intoxicating reality.

It still throws Holly how that simple haircut has rendered Gail— once so fierce with that sometime severe and always sassy ponytail— more vulnerable, more exposed somehow. Gail stripped back. She likes it.

Forcing herself to push away these thoughts and focus, she nods and gives them her best effort at a smile.

"Hi."

"Hey Holly," Chris greets her, with his usual puppyish buoyancy. Gail doesn't say a word, merely meeting her greeting with a quick smile. It's a genuine smile, yet it manages to cause no ripple to the rest of her face, let alone reach anywhere near those eyes of hers.

And, in an attempt to make this unexpected meeting okay, Holly directs the final bars of her own smile right at her before leaning down over the body again.

"So, what do you know, Holly?" Chris asks her, almost obscenely cheery. She almost wants to tell him to dial it back a notch, more for his own sake than hers.

"Nothing yet," She tells him instead. "I'm afraid I've only had him for ten minutes. We're waiting for results from Tox and I'm just going to go over him for any smaller injuries or clues they might have missed at the scene."

Chris just nods and Holly busies herself working her fingers over every inch of the scalp, feeling for any bumps or contusions.

"So, how are things?" Chris suddenly asks, making nice in what he rightfully assumes is a not an ideal social situation.

She registers Gail's impatient inward breath as he asks this question, clearly resenting his infringement on the boundaries of what could have been a well-kept silence, one that if maintained meant Gail wouldn't have to participate in this moment.

"Things are fine, thank you. And you?" Holly asks out of politeness.

"Uh, yeah, good," Chris stumbles, clearly adrift now he is once again left with the burden of carrying on the conversation.

So, instead, to fill the silence, he turns on Gail.

"Hey, are you going for that new detective rotation they were talking about today?"

"Nope."

"Why not?" he asks. "It's the plum job."

"Because I don't want to be a detective," she says quietly.

"But you went for it last time."

"I didn't want to be a detective then, either."

"Then why'd you go for it?"

"Because my father made it very clear how disappointed he'd be if I didn't go for it," she sighs. "And I knew I was safe because Traci was going to get it."

"Oh, right," is all he says to that.

Holly raises her eyebrows slightly as she listens to this exchange, examining the body along the skin of the neck and around the ears, attuned to any discrepancy in what should be smooth planes of skin. She wonders why Chris doesn't know this already about his friend. About his ex-girlfriend. Holly does. And she wonders how much it is that she already knows about this woman that her own friends don't even know. And she wonders why this small fact still makes her feel so warm, like she has been granted a gift no one is ever given, this gift of insight into this beautiful, reticent person who is so clearly slow to trust.

She was keenly aware, when she first met Gail, that she was being subjected to a swifter intimacy than Gail would usually enter into, even when they were going through the early motions of friendship. She knows because Gail told her as much in a roundabout way, often stopping mid-conversation to comment on how weird it was to be talking about something in particular, or even apologising sometimes for revelations she seemed to think were lurching into the territory of over-sharing, things that Holly had never even considered to be even close to it. But she didn't realise how exclusively privy she might have been to some of even the most basic autobiographical details of Gail's life.

As she tunes back into the room, Chris is still fumbling for chatter to fill the noisy silence.

"You going to those drinks after work at The Penny?"

"Nope," is all Gail says.

"Why not? It'll be fun. We never all hang out any more."

"Because I'm busy," she replies slowly, her tone icy.

And yet Chris perseveres.

"Ah, you're going to see that girl? What's her name?"

Holly does the best she can do not to freeze at this sudden sickening possible revelation. She fumbles for the otoscope, unprepared for the possibility of how hard this kind of news might hit her.

"Sophie," Gail responds through clenched teeth.

"That's right," he nods.

Then there is a silence. And despite her best efforts, Holly finds herself unable to stem the tide of curiosity that is making her blood suddenly buzz and her fingers forget to handle the most familiar of medical instruments.

No, she cannot leave this stone unturned, it seems.

"So, you're seeing someone?" she asks, glancing up, pleased with the successful delivery of the offhand tone with which she asks this loaded question. Still, she feels an immediate rush of regret at asking something she probably has no business asking anyway— even with her effort at making things casual. "Sophie."

Gail just pulls at her earring, staring vaguely into the middle distance between them. Not at the body, but not at Holly either.

"Sophie is an eight-year-old," she mutters in an absent monotone.

"Oh," is all Holly manages in response.

And before Chris can finish the with the uncomfortable shuffle of his feet as he realises the potential awkwardness he has created, and before Holly can gather herself to ask another question about this unknown eight-year-old quantity, Gail sighs loudly and Holly decides not to pursue it.

For a moment, there is an almost unbearable silence. Holly puts down her otoscope without even switching it on and busies herself with the simpler task of examining the face.

But then Gail speaks.

"No, of course I'm not seeing anybody," she says in that low-toned, slightly brusque way she has.

Holly looks up from the body.

"I completely fell for you," Gail says unnervingly matter-of-factly, still not looking at her. "And you know, that's _kinda_ hard to come back from," she adds, as if patiently re-stating the obvious for someone who is a bit slow in catching on. Then she shrugs, as if to say, _so be it_ and starts to turn on her heels. "I need a coffee. Anyone want one? Holly? Chris?" But she is headed for the door even as she speaks.

"Uh, no thanks," Chris mutters.

Holly just watches her departing back, speechless, feeling the rise of something like a flood course through her, part the residual embarrassment at asking the question and part something like grief at hearing such a disarmingly honest answer spoken out loud.

And as she whips her head back around to her work— even without meeting his eyes—she senses Chris's alarm in the nervous bounce of his feet and the way his hands are thrust deeper into his pockets as he finds himself caught in the eye of the small storm that is Gail's most private of feelings so casually made public. She knows he wants to leave, but isn't sure what excuse to make to leave his appointed position. So, as much as Holly would also like to be left alone with the aftermath of those words, obedience keeps him here, suspended in this land of awkward.

At least he, smart boy— Holly has only ever been able to think of this strapping manchild with the baby face as a boy— says nothing more, and she returns to her work in peace, her face flushing.

Oh Gail. How does she always manage to do this? How can she bring feelings so tightly bound and tucked away inside Holly so swiftly and violently to the surface with just one utterance? It is a rude, rare gift she possesses. How is she so abrasive, so cutting, so capable of such unfiltered, brutal honesty, and yet so oddly intoxicating because of it?

This is what it has always been like, though. So many of the things Holly would so swiftly turn from in other people are what make Gail so painfully irresistible to her.

And it was these elements of her personality that made her find Rita, the woman she so briefly dated, so lacking, despite all the wonderful things there were about her. She was so fantastically composed, accomplished, sexy, witty and even kind-hearted, and it made Holly feel miserly and mean that she could not enjoy her company— her attention— to the extent that she knew she ought. Too much was suddenly missing: the salt, the spice, the unexpected. All things found in the sheer beautiful ridiculousness that is Gail.

She danced over the thought then, of course, tried to push it away. But she is greeted with inexorable fact of it now: that even in her absence Gail, beautiful, brash, sometimes so unreachable Gail spoiled what, even a few months ago, would have been a rare and intriguing find for Holly. And Rita, for all her charms, was somehow inexplicably inadequate. Well, maybe not inexplicably. But inadequate.

And that was why, after that painfully honest, heartbreaking little encounter in the hallway of Fifteenth, one that Holly had stupidly instigated, needing to make things just a little more right than they had been left, she had ended it with Rita. She had no idea until that moment how capable Gail was going to be of grating at her resolve with just a handful of words. And even though she was nowhere near done with being hurt and upset with Gail, she knew those feelings were still too big— too unwieldy— to be carrying them into another relationship, however purposefully casual.

Holly takes a deep breath, drawing herself back to the task at hand.

With Gail absent, Holly takes the opportunity to pull it together and learn to handle basic medical equipment again. She picks up the otoscope, flicks on the light and gets back to the task, trying to push Gail from her mind, something she has become so well—too well— practised in of late.

She examines the inner right ear. Clear. She moves around the table, registering Gail's return as she leans over the other ear. She does not look up. Instead she bends down, smelling a whiff of coffee. She knows she should tell Gail not to drink it in here, but she won't.

Leaning in closer, she notes something visibly protruding from the outer ear canal. How did Simpson miss this at the scene? She certainly likes to think she would not have. She tries to work out what it is with her naked eye, but she can't. Only a very small part is protruding from the outer canal. Reaching over the body, she snatches up her forceps from the tray. She leans back over; getting a grip on whatever it is with the thin metal blades and tugging it gently loose. It resists ever so slightly and then the object slides out, bloodied at the end. Whatever it is, it has penetrated the eardrum.

Frowning, she holds it up.

"What is _that_?" Chris asks.

Holly moves closer to the light.

"It's a piece of plastic," she says, dubious, unsure of what to make of its sudden presence in what has so far been an unsullied body. She thought for sure the cause of death would be revealed in the tox screen. Of course, this piece of plastic would not have killed him. But its existence _is_ odd to say the least. She peers at it, turning it over in her hand. "You know, it looks like a shard of the casing of a _pen_," she screws up her face, perplexed. "One of those regular plastic ones. Jammed in the ear."

"Weird," Gail and Chris mutter in unison.

"Uh huh," Holly agrees.

She places it on the tray and examines inside the ear.

As suspected.

"It's been pushed right into the ear," she tells them. "The eardrum is a mess."

"Why would anyone stab someone in the ear with a shard of plastic?" Chris asks.

"I wanted to do it to you all the time when we were going out," Gail offers.

Holly raises an eyebrow at that.

"You did not," Chris counters, scoffing.

"Okay, only sometimes," Gail says, smiling sweetly at him.

Then she catches Holly's eye and the smile disappears, as if she is embarrassed suddenly to be talking 'ex' in front of her. And Holly is not sure if it is because they are now exes, too, or something else.

"I'll fingerprint it," Holly tells them, leaving them there, grateful for this small respite.

"And I'll call Oliver," Chris says, pulling out his phone.

She returns a few minutes later, prints emailed to Fifteenth, and returns to her task of examining the body.

"Hey Diaz," a voice calls out.

Another uniform, one Holly does not recognise pokes his head in the door. "Shaw says he needs you need to come back to Fifteenth for interviews. Said Peck should stay and bring back the evidence."

Chris nods but turns to Gail and gives her the briefest of regretful looks, like it has already been pre-arranged— silently or otherwise between them— that if one of them were to be left here, it would be Chris, faithful puppy to the rescue all the way. But now he cannot.

"Okay, coming." He turns on his heel, flashing Holly an awkward nodding smile. "See you, Holly."

"Bye," Holly looks up, smiles and waves a gloved hand at him, catching Gail's eye on her way back to the body. But Gail's face is set at purposefully at blank, staring at the coffee cup clutched in her hand.

Holly takes her time with the rest of the examination. She takes her time because, despite herself, she finds that she wants to keep her here. Because suddenly, requiring Gail's presence is a small matter of urgency.

Because missing her has been a petty, self-inflicted torture, one that she tried to tell herself that, however painful, didn't mean anything beyond what it usually means when a relationship is abruptly ended— and well before it's expected expiration date. Of course she missed her. But it didn't mean they were right together, she repeatedly told herself, or that she should give in to this desire to see her. But she could tell herself this when Gail was a mere presence in her mind. It's not so easy to dismiss her when she is a startling, pensive presence here in her lab, and has just willingly admitted her inability to get over her.

And now she wishes Gail would speak. Speak in general. Or— better— to speak specifically to the matter of the two of them again. But she also knows it would be unfair of her to ask for that. Because Holly knows that what she didn't give Gail when she actually tried to ask for that opportunity last time here at the lab, was a chance to talk. And she learned that in a swift and brutal lesson from the brief glimpse she got of Gail voicing her feelings that same night in the hallway of Fifteenth, a lesson in how willing and ready Gail finally was to speak her feelings aloud.

She clears her throat, knowing she needs to be the instigator now.

"Hey," she says quietly, staring down at the body. "I'm really sorry I asked you that before, about if you were seeing someone. It's really none of my business."

"That's okay," Gail shrugs. "You're allowed to ask me things."

Holly nods, not quite sure what the nature of that simple response should tell exactly, what it should tell her of where the two of them stand exactly. But she knows it's an offering of some sort, so she takes it with two hands.

"So how have you been?" she ventures.

"Uh," Gail takes in a breath and lets it out slowly, as if thinking. "You know, I'm …" She shrugs and frowns. "I don't know. Sorry," she finally mutters.

Holly just looks at her, surprised by the apology.

"Why be sorry?"

"I don't know, actually," Gail frowns. "Maybe because I just told you that you could ask me things, I guess, and then I completely failed to deliver." She kind of smiles, one of her doubtful, thin, lips-pressed-together smiles.

"Ask me something easier," she says.

"Okay," Holly smiles. She tries to think clearly enough to formulate an innocuous question, to play along with this game, to answer this offering Gail is giving her in the form of a conversation she may or may not deserve. But she can only think of one question she wants to ask.

So before she can second-guess the wisdom of it, or give in to her usual need to know where something is taking her before she speaks, she decides to ask it anyway.

"Can I ask you something that I am not sure if it is hard or easy?"

She looks up. And Gail meets her eyes, her lips pursed and her eyes unflinching.

"Sure," she shrugs.

"If I were to ask you," Holly bites her lip, trying to quash the sudden rush of nerves, to hold them in abeyance. "What you were going to say to me, when you wanted to explain yourself to me that night when you asked me for a drink … ." She takes a deep breath, eyes fixed to Gail, already trying to gauge her reaction. "Would you still tell me?"

"That depends," she immediately counters, her blue eyes still unblinking.

"On what?" Holly asks, even though she is sure she already knows.

"Are you still seeing someone?"

"No, I am not," Holly replies, knowing full well that she is giving away the last card she holds. But, for the sake of knowing, she's willing to relinquish it. She wants the answer too much, despite not knowing exactly where she wants it to take them.

Gail drops her head slightly, staring down at her hands for what feels like a thousand years. Then she finally nods. "Yeah," she shrugs. "I'd tell you."

Holly nods, pulling off her gloves and dropping them in a waste bin beside her. She smiles, crossing her arms over her chest.

"And would you also tell me about this Sophie?"

She can't help it, because she is so, so damn curious about the newfound existence of a small person called Sophie in Gail's life.

With that question Gail smiles a smile unlike any she has fabricated today. It is a smile that edges closer to being of the riches that is one of Gail's rare gifts of a smile than anything Holly has had had pleasure to witness from her in a long time — the kind she produces when she's really seeing or being seen.

Gail nods again.

"Yeah," she concedes. "And I'd tell you about Sophie, too."

"Good," is all Holly can bring herself to say.

Then she passes her the bag with the piece of bloody plastic inside.

"Your evidence," she says.

And Gail just takes it, granting her another smile.

"At least it isn't a severed thumb," she says quietly, turning on her heel and heading for the door.

And Holly just watches her leave.

Later, as she writes up her notes at her desk, she hears the beep of her phone. With a small, hopeful trill in her stomach she pulls it from the pocket of her lab coat.

_So does this mean I should be asking you out for a drink again?_

She instantly smiles, wide and voluptuous, but also feels the push of tears at her eyes too, as she types out her response.

_Yes. Please._

She barely has to wait a minute.

_Okay_

But that is all the response she gets. No when. No where. Not yet.

And Holly doesn't care. Because she finds herself strangely willing to wait for whatever is to come. She knows she has no choice. She's already given in to it.

**This may or may not be a thing. Not sure yet. Let me know what you think.**

**Thank you to SG for your vote of confidence. It's always treasured!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N**

So, I've written a little more of Holly's perspective, it turns out. I realise however, that if I do continue with this, it probably won't go with the arc of whatever happens on the show in the last few episodes, though, which might be weird and annoying for some. But anyway, we'll see how it goes. Take a minute if you will and tell me if you're willing to stick with it!

**I**

"It wasn't down too deep," Dave tells her as they lean over the tiny grave together. "Ground is probably still too hard to dig."

Holly nods and peers right into the shallow hole in the ground. All she can see is the swaddle of thin blue fabric it is shrouded in. Whoever did it wrapped the infant first. That says something.

"You know what's weird, though?" Dave mutters, as they move to the far side, near the back fence.

"What?" Holly asks, squatting down in the muddy grass making its enthusiastic return from the long winter. Now she can make out a small patch of its pallid, downy little scalp, exposed to the light and cold.

"Well whoever did it, wrapped it, and they bothered to bury it, but then they buried it _face down_."

Holly looks up at him, frowning.

He holds out his hands as if to say _I know, right?_

"That _is_ weird." She shakes her head. Even a psych 101 student would know that this goes against the grain of most disposal behaviours.

"Uh huh," he agrees. "Anyway, my hunch is it wasn't born alive."

Holly just nods. They'll have to wait and see when she gets it back to the lab. But historically Dave's hunches have been right a lot more often than they've been wrong.

"So, where's Tee?" he asks her. "Why is he not on this one?"

"Good question," Holly tells him, pushing her glass up her nose. She has absolutely no idea why she was given this call instead of Tee. But here she is, dragged from a routine coronary to this suburban backyard along with what looks like half of Toronto's police force, dealing with the alarming and possibly connected problems of a missing teenager and a recently buried newborn. Well, the teen is not her problem. Not so far, anyway. It is the infant that is suddenly her piece of the puzzle to deal with.

But the teen explains why there are more police on the scene than usual, searching the premises, coming and going, huddled around the poor father who found the tiny grave behind this bush, looking for clues to his daughter's disappearance. She stands up again, moving clear of Wendy and her camera.

She can't take a closer look or take the body back until they are done with the pictures. So instead she leans against the back fence, the collar of her jacket pulled up around her ears and gazes around the yard. And then just as quickly she forces herself to stop her visual sweep, hauling her eyes back to the scene directly in front of her. She knows she is really just looking for Gail. And now is not the time to be looking for Gail.

But there she is again, entering her thoughts in that way she stubbornly does, an adamant presence no matter how hard Holly tried to push her aside. She wonders, if they really were finished, just how long it would take for her to stop looking for Gail at crimes scenes, how long it would take for her eyes not be automatically attuned to a flash of white blonde hair, or to the traces of swagger in a nearby cop's walk. She sighs. All she knows is that it is nowhere near happening yet.

* * *

**II**

"Hey Stewart."

Holly looks up from the impossibly tiny form of the infant she is about to start examining.

It's Bette at the door, her bright maroon hair harnessed by a fluorescent yellow band into a huge tangled bun right at the top of her head, strands of hair sprouting up out of it. It looks like some sort of weird carnivalesque pineapple. Holly stifles a smile. Bette's always the brightest thing in this place, even when she's covered by her lab coat. It's an aggressively luridl bright, but at least it makes a change from the usual steel and monochrome of the place. She knows that underneath that oversized lab coat, Bette will be wearing some clashing concoction of floral and stripe, or some crazily contrasting shades on top and bottom. Bete is always so far off in the fashion department it's almost right.

Right now she is standing in the doorway frowning, her thick arms folded fiercely over her chest, her black booted foot tapping loudly against the linoleum.

"I have a question," she announces to the room, even though Holly is the only one in it.

Holly nods, ready for it, because she already knows what it is going to be. And she knows it is the same question she has been asking herself ever since she was sent out on the call for the buried baby.

"Actually," Bette continues, releasing one arm and resting it against the doorframe, one leg crossed over the other. "I have _two_ questions. First, what the hell is up with this complete fucking clusterfuck of a day?" She shakes her head, eyebrows hunched low over her eyes. "I thought we'd be doing all cut and drieds today— autopsies and tox screens and general boringness. We _needed_ that kind of day, too. Poor old Brett's got bodies stacked up back there from last night."

Holly shakes her head. "I have no idea why today has decided to yield more mysterious deaths than an episode of CSI." she tells her, giving her a sympathetic smile. This is not the day Holly was expecting either. "Next question?" she asks hopefully.

Bette lets out a loud, disgruntled sigh.

"Well, aside from the fact we are getting all these fucking cases at once, what I really want to know is why the hell you are parked in here with a deceased infant, while Tee, our paeds expert is down the hall with a shooting victim, while I, clearly our ballistics freak is waiting for them to bring in a multiple stab wound?" she asks, holding out a frustrated hand and shakes her head. "Because, you know, that makes complete fucking sense, doesn't it? Who the fuck is assigning these cases anyway?"

Holly nods. "Yeah, it _is_ kind of counterintuitive," she agrees, pulling her lab coat closer around her. It is _particularly_ freezing in here today.

"Ya think?" Bette asks, sarcastic, crossing her arms again and frowning. "So who the fuck's fucking idea was this?"

Holly shrugs, smiling. She's already lost count of how many times Bette has cursed since she walked in here. No wonder she's never allowed near the deceased's families.

"It was probably Colvin's. So chill," Holly says, trying to calm her down before she goes the full Bette. "And you _know_ why. She's new. It's not like she is out to get us or she's trying to ruin our day. She just doesn't know us yet."

Bette just gives her a mutinous frown.

Holly smiles and shakes her head again. Sometimes she thinks her friend actually just _likes_ to be outraged sometimes.

"Well fuck that," Bette growls. "I want my bullet holes."

Holly stops herself from sighing. Why does she always attract the difficult ones?

"Do want me to go chat with her about changing up?" Holly asks her, certain Tee will be grateful to trade too if Holly can manage it. But she also knows Tee would never ask, though. He is the type to always just do as he's told, not what he actually wants. And that's why, despite his seniority, it is not Tee that is her new boss, as he probably should be. Instead they are trying to get used to this new woman who has come in from another lab and another system entirely. She seems nice, accommodating, but she is so buried playing catch ups on paper work and procedure after Gary left so suddenly, that she has barely had a chance to get to know the people doing the work, let alone what they can do.

And Holly knows she's got to be the one to ask too. Bette's more likely to work herself into a lather over it—not even getting near approaching authority until she is so positively outraged she'll just end up losing her temper and getting herself in trouble. That's her usual MO. It taught Holly quickly to recognise the signs of potential conflict quickly with this woman when they began to work together, and to nip any potential issues with her in the bud as soon as possible. That's how they have managed to become such firm allies, despite their differences and Bette's combative manner. Holly's reward for managing her in this way, of course, is the cheerful, hilarious, ballsy Bette— the kind of colleague she gets when her friend is not in a filthy mood like today's, the kind of colleague who is great for a laugh or an after-work debrief at a bar.

And over the last few years Holly has learned that if there are any requests to be made on behalf of her little day shift pathology team, it's got to be her if they want it done. The three of them are pretty much agreed upon that.

_You're the type bosses, parents and nuns love_, Bette told her witheringly over a drink once, after one particular occasion when they'd needed to wangle something out of the boss and Holly had managed the impossible.

Holly had just laughed, because so far it's been pretty much true— well except for nuns. She's never met one. She does have a good track record with bosses and with parents so far, though. She'd been wondering though, if she could maintain this record with meeting Gail parents, because by all accounts they sound like hard work. Missing out on meeting them is one thing she hasn't been too sad about with all this mess with Gail.

Bette sighs loudly, interrupting her thoughts.

"Yeah, can you go ask? I _hate_ stabbings," she moans. "Too fucking messy."

"Okay," Holly tells her, smiling and shaking her head. "I'll be back. Just calm down you," she tells her, shooing her aside so she can slip past and out the door. "Breathe and I'll be back. Then you can have your bullet holes. And I'll happily give up my possible infanticide for some blood wounds," she throws back over her shoulder as she leaves Bette standing in the doorway.

"I love you, Stewart," Bette calls out after her. "I'd smell grave wax all day for you!"

Holly just grins and waves a hand over her shoulder at her.

And it's true. She _is_ completely happy to trade cases. Sharp force trauma is_ her_ thing. Infants, on the other hand, are definitely not. Infants make her nervous. They don't upset her particularly. They are just so damn _small._

She strides down the long hall, remembering that first paediatric autopsy they did when she was an intern. It wasn't a baby, but a toddler who'd drowned in their swimming pool at home. He couldn't have been more than two or three though. And he was so tiny, lying stretched out on the spread of the long steel slab, all waxen skin, blue lips, baby fat and brown curls.

Usually, by the time their resident even got there, they would all have already been hanging over the body, elbowing each other out of the way, trying to guess at the cause of death if it wasn't already completely obvious. Not this time. She remembers how one by one, so many of them had walked in and were stopped in their track by sight of this tiny form in front of them, horrified by the thought of examining a corpse that young. One girl even started crying the minute she laid eyes on him. Another guy left the room and didn't come back.

The pathologist who was teaching them back then was a fairly relaxed, middle-aged guy—more patient with questions and mistakes than their previous resident had been. Holly had expected him to be tougher on them, though, at some of their reactions to the tiny little corpse. But he wasn't. He just walked in and quietly told them to go ahead and be upset if they needed to, because that was the last time they were ever going to be allowed to be emotional in public in a clinical situation, and that they needed to get it out then and there.

Holly remembers her guilt and alarm at realising she that she wasn't as distraught as many of the people around her. It scared her a little that she wasn't as struck by this small defenceless body as she knew she ought to be. But she wasn't. What was _wrong_ with her? All she could do was wonder what she was _supposed_ to be feeling. She wondered, that is, until the day a body did get to her in that way.

It was the corpse of an elderly man, about eighty years old. Thrombotic stroke. She doesn't know what it was, but all she remembers is that as they waited for the examination to start, she found herself fighting a sudden, stinging assault of tears in front of this man, found lying outside a news stand in the snow in the very early hours of a Wednesday morning in January.

And suddenly, although it was much later in their rotation— months after the toddler—when they had all become so used to the sight of corpses in many states of disrepair or decay, she'd had to hide her sudden, raw grief upon witnessing his withered, exhausted body, resolute in its finality— in its determinedness in being done with the job of living.

To this day she doesn't know why he got to her so badly, but he did. Later she wondered if it was just the sudden realisation of the inescapability— the mundaneness even— of death, or something else. She'll never really know.

* * *

**III**

"Please don't judge me for this," the policewoman says, backing up against the fridge and turning her head away from the body. She closes her eyes as one of the interns who brought him back from x-rays helps Holly move him onto the slab.

"I'm okay with dead people," the woman, a petite thing with dark hair, says. "I really am, usually. You _have_ to be in this job." She puts up a hand as a screen between her eyes and the body as it lies on the slab, as if her eyelids aren't an effective enough shield.

"And I'm okay with blood, too," she adds before Holly can say anything. "But there's something about stab wounds. Great big bloody penetrating stab wounds that just _freak_ me out," she squeaks.

The intern grins sympathetically as Holly hands her the file and leaves her in the company of this babbling woman in uniform.

"I don't know," the girl goes on. "Maybe it's Freudian. My boyfriend says it's Freudian. Anyway, whatever it is, stabbings totally mess with me."

Holly raises an eyebrow at this admittance, which is most definitely dancing close to the fine line between here and overshare territory, especially considering she doesn't even know this woman's name.

"But please don't judge me for it," the cop says, her eyes still closed.

"Don't worry, I won't judge you," Holly chuckles as takes a long look at the body, the chest and neck and clothing riddled with rough incisions. She picks up the file notes.

"Thanks, the girl says, relieved, jamming her hands in her pockets and staring at the floor. "You don't seem like you'd be a judgemental sort of person." She rocks back and forth on her heels. "From what I can tell from your voice, anyway." She takes a deep breath and sighs.

Holly quickly scans the crime scene report. She's alad been told most of what she needs to know by phone.

"I'm Price, by the way," the woman says as Holly skms her eyes over the notes. "Well, Chloe. I'll never get used to this last name business. Call me Chloe. We can do that, right?" she asks. "Forensics and police? We're on the same team? Same place in the pecking order, right?"

Holly nods, smiling, looking at her over the folder.

So, this is the famous Chloe. She should have known.

"I'm Dr. Stewart. Or Holly," she adds quickly. "I'll leave that particular decision in your hands," she tells her, before getting down to business. "So was the weapon located at the scene?"

"Nope," Chloe shakes her head. "Not so far, anyway."

"Well, I am probably not going to be able to tell you much on that front," Holly warns her. She has to. Some detectives and cops seem to think you can just look at a wound and tell them what kind of weapon did it, as if something as elastic as skin just helpfully stays neatly in the shape of the blade that violently invaded it for the sake of solving a crime. "Not until the autopsy. But I'll start in on trace evidence after I take some snaps and I should be able to tell you _something_ about the perpetrator, I hope."

She turns around and picks up her camera.

"Okay, great," Chloe says cheerfully, wandering over to Holly's desk and sitting down in her chair. She picks up one of Holly's medical books and starts flipping through it, pulling appropriately grossed out faces.

"Ooh, what do you know, stab wounds," she squeaks, slamming the book shut and putting it straight back down on the desk, sighing loudly.

And Holly tries not to laugh.

* * *

**IV**

"So, got to ask," Chloe says, changing subjects at a rapidly dizzying pace for the umpteenth time in the last half an hour she has been sitting at Holly's desk, looking through her things and chatting.

"Ask what?" Holly mutters, turning the hands a little to get a closer look at the defence wounds. She asks even though she is pretty sure she knows exactly what is coming.

"Why do forensics?" Chloe asks, picking up a paperweight and passing it gently between her hands, face screwed up. "What makes someone choose this job?"

Yep, there it is.

Holly just smiles and shrugs, giving the default answer she always gives to people she doesn't know that well.

"I like mysteries," she grins. "No fun if the person can tell you what happened."

"Oh, fair enough," Chloe shrugs, sitting back in the chair, contemplating the answer. Before she can speak, the tinny notes of a faintly familiar song pour from her pocket.

"Oh, sorry, hang on." She pulls a phone out of her pocket and picks it up, wandering out of the room.

A moment later, she sticks her head back in the room.

"I just have to go check on something with the baby … no," she mutters, checking the screen of her phone. "With the bullet wounds. I'll be right back."

Holly just nods, wondering how happy her colleagues are now they are with their rightful victims in the other exam rooms.

She takes a deep breath, easing into the sudden silence in the room. She likes this Chloe creature a lot already, but maybe not as much as Chloe seems to like to talk.

Mostly, though, she's grateful for her company right now, because as weird as it might sound to someone like Chloe— or anyone who doesn't work in forensics, really, searching for trace evidence and counting and measuring stab wounds can be incredibly exacting and dull some days.

She is still bent over the body when Chloe marches back into the room.

"Well, way to bury the lead Doctor Stewart," she says cheerfully as she drops down onto the chair again.

"Please, I've decided, you should call me Holly," Holly says, frowning at what may or may not be a fleck of fibre caught on a fingernail. "And what do you mean, bury the lead?"

"So _you're_ the forensic pathologist that used to date Gail," Chloe says, almost gleeful with the possession of her brand spanking new bit of knowledge. "I mean I'd heard of you," she says. "And I think we were even at the same wedding once, but I didn't meet you. And then I was just talking to Dov, and when I said I was hanging out here, he asked if I was working with you," she says breathlessly. But then, that's how she seems to say most things, Holly is realising, like she is not used to being allowed to get all her words out without being cut off.

"Sorry," Chloe says suddenly before Holly can say anything. "My boyfriend's kind of a gossip."

Holly just smiles. She's heard the same thing, actually.

"It's fine," she says quietly, pulling the light over the body and sweeping over the surface of the victim's hooded jacket for hairs and fibres.

"You're not exactly what I imagined you'd be like," Chloe muses.

And Holly can feel her scrutinising her from her seat. She smiles again.

Then, she can't help it, she has to ask.

"What exactly were you expecting?"

"I don't know, really," Chloe sighs. "Maybe not someone as chilled as you. Though it makes sense when you think about it. I mean, you'd have to be pretty calm to date Gail. She's a pretty intense person."

And before Holly can even decide what she can possibly say in response to that that wouldn't compromise herself or Gail, Chloe goes on.

"Yeah, dating Gail, that's got to be … different. Not," she adds, quickly. "That I expect to you to tell me anything. I can just pretty much imagine it would be like that."

Holly gently plucks a strand of light hair— too light to be the victim's— from the sleeve with her forceps, drawing it slowly off the sweater.

She still doesn't say anything to Chloe. She doesn't really know what to say to this slightly awkward new conversational tangent. Besides, she is quickly learning this girl does not need another person to hold a conversation.

"I mean, she's so … well … prickly in general," Chloe says. "I've always kind of figured she's probably really sweet and open in a relationship. I mean, she's got to be like that with _someone_, right? Because with everyone else, she's got all these rules and walls. But yeah, I can I kind of picture that with Gail," Chloe muses, folding her arms over her chest. "Just saving up all her nice for whoever she dating. That's what she's like, right?" she asks. "No, wait, hang on, sorry, you don't have to tell me that," she rushes in, flapping her hands. "It's totally none of my business. Sorry"

"You've obviously thought about this a lot," Holly observes, smiling in lieu of the asked-for answer.

But she can't help wondering how right Chloe is about Gail. Well she already knows she is half-right, at least. She _was _sweet, and she _was_ pretty open with Holly as far as she knew. Until that awful night at the Penny with Lisa, at least. Until that night she'd never really properly witnessed— let alone ever had to bear the brunt of— that part of Gail, so ready to inflict hurt, so closed and quick to run. That had been a shock. She knew it existed, sort of, but not for her.

"Yeah, I think about Gail a lot. Well," Chloe corrects herself. "I think about _everyone_ a lot. That's what happens when your brain doesn't ever stop moving. I find myself lying there awake at night wondering these kinds of things. Even though I am pretty sure Gail doesn't ever give me a second's thought," she adds blithely, as if already long-resolved to this fact.

Holly looks over at her. Chloe's got her elbow on the desk, her cheek resting on her hand, staring up at the ceiling, still determinedly avoiding looking at the body on the slab.

"Well I'd heard about you, so she must have thought about you sometime," she tells Chloe, for some reason compelled to change her mind about Gail a little.

"Really?" Chloe looks over at her with a dubious smile. "God, I wouldn't want to know what Gail had to say about me," she sighs.

And when Holly thinks about the things Gail has said about Chloe, she realises she probably doesn't want to share them, either. So she doesn't say a word, although she knows her silence pretty much confirms Chloe's correctness.

It's a pity too, because even though she is excessively chatty, Chloe seems like a sweetheart. Holly can tell that already. And if they worked together, they'd probably actually become friends.

"Anyway, it's none of my damn business." Chloe sighs. "And I am sorry if you were sad about you guys breaking up and I am just sitting her chatting about it. That's kind of insensitive I now realise." She smiles at Holly, eyes wide. "And you probably were a bit sad, right? I mean, she's super hot in a kind of scary way."

"Who's super hot?" a low voice says from door.

Chloe jumps in her seat and Holly looks up from her survey of the torn, bloody jeans of the victim.

It's Gail, standing there in the doorway notebook in one hand, the other hand combing her fingers through her hair.

"Hey," she nods at Holly, smiling gently before turning to Chloe, her face turning to blank.

"Hey, Swarek said you should go back to help out at the scene. He and Traci are headed over here."

"Yes!" Chloe jumps from her seat. Then she turns to Holly, holding out her arms, looking apologetic. "No offense to you of course," she says. "I like _you _a lot. You're awesome. But this place where you live?" she looks around the room, frowning. "This place not so much."

"I take no offense," Holly says, smiling at her before turning straight back to the welcome sight of Gail. She can't help it. She's so damn relieved to see her. It's been a week since Gail messaged her with that one word _okay_. And since then, she hasn't heard a thing.

Chloe looks back and forth between Gail and Holly for a moment, clearly curious now she is seeing them in the same space for the first time, before finally saying, "Anyway, I'll be out front. Bye Holly. Super great to meet you."

She waves at Holly before slipping discreetly around Gail and through the door, leaving them together.

"So why is _Chloe_ calling you awesome?" Gail asks her, eyes narrowing as she leans against the doorframe with her elbow.

Holly smiles. "I would have thought it was completely obvious…"

Gail, as ever, ignores the sass.

"Well _I _like it here," she says, looking around the room.

Holly smiles, visited by a sudden paralysing flashback of that afternoon in the lab months back, Gail sitting in that chair by the bones of a long-dead man, unwilling to leave, speaking candidly of her tried and true ability to panic and screw up relationships.

"That's because you are delightfully macabre," she tells Gail lightly. "Chloe's a bit … sunny for the morgue."

"Chloe's a twit," Gail sighs. "I better go. Bullet wounds and babies to report in on. But Swarek said to tell you he's on his way."

"Okay," Holly nods, looking down at the body. She'd better get a move on.

She looks up to say as much to Gail, but she's gone.

* * *

**V**

"You know what I don't get?" a voice suddenly asks, making Holly jump.

She sighs as she pulls on her jacket. Why can't Gail ever start with hello, like a normal person?

There she is at the door again, arms folded over her chest, head tilted to the side. She must have been here all afternoon, with one of the others.

"What?" Holly asks, wary of where this question could go. You never know where a Gail tangent is going to take you. And she's already kind of exhausted from the afternoon's headsport with Chloe.

She looks over at Gail, awaiting the still unasked question.

"How come we never met before that day?" Gail asks. "I mean, I'd never seen you before in my life until we met on that Robbins case," she says, frowning. "And now …"

"Just when you'd like to avoid me, you see me twice in a week?" Holly interrupts, smiling.

Gail just bites her lip, staring into the space ahead of her, as she always seems to be doing lately, sorting out whatever is going on in her own head.

"I'm not trying to avoid you," she finally says quietly, shaking her head.

Relieved by those words, Holly picks up her bag and comes around and leans on the front of her desk, a few feet away from Gail, hiking the strap onto her shoulder.

"I'd seen _you_ before, you know," she tells her.

"Really?"

"Yeah," Holly nods, remembering how she'd registered the presence of the beautiful frowning blonde in the halls of the lab every so often. She hadn't penetrated her mind, however, beyond merely noting her conspicuous looks and her formidable, often stern presence, before turning to whatever was urgently at hand in her workday at the time. But she saw her. "I saw you."

"Oh," is all Gail says, smiling slightly.

Before she can say anything else, Bette sticks her face in the door, right next to Gail, sighing loudly.

"Stewart, I could not love you more. That was amazing," she sighs, like she's just been at a day spa or on a tropical holiday, not fishing bullets out of bodies. "And Tee said to tell you that you were right, no infanticide. Newborn was DOA."

Holly nods. Well, Dave was right.

"Anyway, I've got to shoot over the Rosewood lab for a consult," Bette slaps the side of the doorframe, ignoring Gail. "Drink later?"

"Maybe," Holly tells her. "Call me."

"Okay, bye!" And she is gone.

Holly shakes her head. Typical Bette, an entirely different creature to the furious frustrated woman of six hours ago. It's amazing what an exciting case can do to her.

She looks back at Gail. She is frowning and rubbing her hands furiously over her ears and pulling at her collar.

"What's up?" she asks.

"It's so freaking cold in here today," Gail grumbles. "Even my ears are freezing,"

"The perils of short hair," Holly grins. "But yes, it has been extra arctic in here all day. I have no idea why."

She goes back around her desk and pull out one of her drawers. She takes out a woollen scarf she left in there a while back.

"Here," she tosses it to Gail.

"Thanks," Gail mumbles, turning it over in her hands, contemplating it. "Hey," she says quietly, wrapping the strip of dark blue striped wool around her neck as many times as it will go, pulling it up over her ears. "You know, me not calling yet is not me _not_ calling."

"Um, okay," Holly says, buttoning up her jacket and looking over at Gail, waiting for her to explain.

"It's just me not calling _yet_," Gail tells her, sighing. "There were late shifts, and a stakeout and," she pulls in a breath. "A family dinner."

Holly nods, relieved. It has been a disquieting week, waiting for a call or message that simply has not come.

But she all knows these all things Gail has been doing are maybe only part of the reason why Gail hasn't called yet. Yeah, Gail probably has been busy. But she also knows if Gail really wants something, she'll make it happen. She's just buying herself some time, maybe sorting out her thoughts. Even after knowing her this brief time Holly knows that as haphazard as Gail can appear, she likes to be prepared for things, to be certain of what is to come.

"It's okay," she assures her, trying to sound relaxed. "I can wait— I'm waiting."

Holly drops her hands and clings to the edges of the desk. It's alarming how much she'd like to reach out and touch Gail right now, even just something tepid and innocuous, like a hand on the arm or the squeeze of a wrist.

But she knows why she shouldn't. For one, right now, no touch between them could be un-charged, devoid of greater meaning and things are confusing enough right now as they are. And also because right now she also knows it is not her choice to make. She made some sort of decision— however unconsciously — to leave the ball in Gail's court. And now she has to live with that.

"Okay, good" Gail nods, pushing her body away from the bench and standing up straight. "Well, I better get back to the station."

She finally looks up at Holly, the first eye contact in minutes. Holly braces herself for the shock of blue. There it is.

"And I better get moving too," Holly agrees, standing up.

"Uh, so are you leaving, too?" Gail asks, suddenly unsure of herself. "Should I wait? Walk you out?"

Holly goes to nod, automatic, but suddenly finds she can't face walking out of here with Gail, of taking a moment that is already on a time limit, that has a certain ending, any further than this room. It will be even more disappointing when they part.

"Uh, actually, I just have to drop in and see my boss on the way out," she tells her. It's partly true, because she really probably should follow up on the earlier case switch, make nice on the favour granted.

Gail just nods, staring down at the folder, nodding.

"Okay, well, I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Night, Gail," Holly smiles, letting out a breath as she watches her departing back for the second time in a week.


	3. Chapter 3

**I**

_Friday drink?_

Holly smiles. It's Bette, too lazy or busy to walk over from her lab thirty feet away to ask the question. Just as she is about to head over to Bette, her phone rings.

It's Lisa.

"Hey." Holly sits back down at her desk.

"Hi. So you _are_ talking to me?"

Holly sighs, picking up a pen and flicking it impatiently between her fingers.

"Lise, I was _never_ not talking to you. I was never not talking to you because I am not twelve years old," she says, and then purses her lips as realises her unconscious dig at Gail in saying that.

"Okay," Lisa counters. "But you didn't answer my call at lunch today, so I was scared you were still mad. And you _were_ mad."

Holly rolls her eyes. "I was just busy. And _of course_ I was mad. You got drunk and said incredibly obnoxious things about the woman I was seeing. Right in front of her."

"I didn't actually know she was there," Lisa objects

Holly doesn't say a word. She just waits, chewing on the end of the pen. They have already been through this enough times already.

"And yes," Lisa says obediently, in answer to her silence. "I know it doesn't matter, and I shouldn't have said them then anyway."

She sighs loudly into the phone. "I really am sorry, Holls."

"I know you are," Holly murmurs, idly scribbling on her notepad.

And she knows she is.

Yes, Lisa probably would have said all those things about Gail at some point anyway— and interrogated Holly's intentions with this new relationship too, at some point too. Because that's what she does. And there's no stopping Lisa when she's being kneejerk judge-y. Sometimes you just have to let her get it it all out.

But it's true; Lisa would never have said anything like that right then and there, in possible earshot, if she wasn't halfway to drunk and oblivious to Gail's presence.

"I saw her, you know," Holly says quietly, leaning her head back in her chair. "Twice, actually."

"Where? "

"Here, at work. On police stuff, but we talked. Kind of."

"And?" Lisa asks. Holly can hear the sound of a door slamming and footsteps through the phone. She must be coming home from work already.

"Tell me you sorted it out," Lisa groans. "For one, because I still feel terrible about it. But also because you gave up that hot Rita chick because you were too busy having all your feelings for Gail. While still refusing to do anything about those feelings, of course."

"Lisa, shut up," Holly says, automatic.

"Okay," she says, agreeable.

And Holly smiles to herself, because her friend has been very well behaved lately- since that night. But she knows it won't be long before she's flinging out opinions left, right and centre again.

"I needed some time," Holly explains _again._ "To figure out … Gail. And me."

"I know you did." Lisa sighs. "I _do _get it, Holly. I'm just teasing."

Then she is silent for a moment.

"So, where are you at with her?" she finally asks.

"I'm not really sure," Holly confesses, leaning her chin in her hand, frowning.

She hates this uncertainty. It's like a small persistent presence, all the time. Even when she is not directly thinking about Gail. It is still there, dogging her.

She takes a deep breath and slowly tells her friend about what has passed between them this last week on these last two meetings, and how she has put herself in the place of simply having to wait for Gail to call the shots, finishing with Gail's assurance that she was planning on calling.

"Anyway, that was Tuesday and she still hasn't called," Holly sighs.

"Well, she's probably a bit daunted," Lisa offers, matter-of-fact.

"But why? I don't get it," Holly frowns. "She basically tells me _in public_— well, in front of someone else— her ex no less— that she has fallen for me." She chews at the end of her pen. "And she's talking to me when she sees me, but she still doesn't call. Why would she be daunted to call me?"

"Yeah, well probably because you asked her to explain herself," Lisa interrupts, as if it is the most obvious answer in the world. "That's not an easy thing to do. Not on demand."

"I didn't _demand_ it," Holly says, frowning. "I just asked if she'd still tell me what she was going to say. And these were things she _wanted_ to say a month ago."

"I know, but Gail might be thinking about it differently now, Holly," Lisa reasons.

Holly can hear the sound of bangs and clatters at Lisa's end and then liquid being poured into a glass.

"Yes, that is the sound of Friday night pinot gris you hear," Lisa tells her, laughing.

"You know," she continues. "That was a month ago when she said she wanted to explain herself to you. And when she did try to talk to you, and actually told you how important you were to her, you told me you pretty much walked away from her."

"I did," Holly admits. "But it was because …"

"And you know," Lisa interjects. "That's hard enough to cope with the first time, I'll bet. And it kind of puts a lot of pressure on the second attempt now you've suddenly turned around and asked for it, doesn't it? She's probably wondering what she can say that won't make you walk away again."

Holly shakes her head. "But I wouldn't."

"Does she know that? Also, anyway, even if it's not what is making her stall, the other thing is that people who have their shit together— especially their emotional shit— are kind of terrifying to those of us who don't, you know."

"What do you mean?" Holly pulls a face, wondering where Lisa is going with all this now.

"You people," Lisa continues. "You people with your nice parents and your normal upbringings and your regular-sized emotional baggage, you don't get that sometimes this most basic stuff is the hardest. You don't get that knowing and feeling— let alone speaking— your feelings doesn't come that easily to everyone."

"I _do_ know that," Holly protests. "I just want to get where she is coming from. It's not like I am asking for her to plunge into her deepest and darkest feelings and confess all."

"I'm sure you aren't," Lisa soothes. "I'm just saying, from what you've told me, she probably nervous about doing this on demand. And she clearly isn't that great at expressing herself. I mean this _is_ the girl who freaked out and cut off all her hair in your bathroom."

"Well, it _was_ a pretty harrowing day," Holly objects. She's still vaguely regretful about debriefing what happened that night with Lisa. Not because Lisa would ever tell anyone. She wouldn't. But because it such a vulnerable, private moment for Gail.

But that day after the case with thumb, and that fresh new assault of Gail, she'd needed to talk to someone, to sort out her conflicted feelings about Gail, about Rita, about everything. And, as ever, it was Lisa she turned to because, for all her flaws, Lisa is the one person she knows who can take something, strip it of all the flesh and deliver back to her as bones so Holly can actually _see_ it. That is what Lisa does best. And that was exactly what was needed— and is still needed.

"Yeah, Holly, I am not saying a freak out wasn't justified," Lisa counters. "Not at all. Because if two of my friends got shot— oh yeah, and _I_ got shot at— and then I started making out with the lady folk for the first time, all in the space of hours, I'd probably freak a little too. But I am saying that freaking out in _that way—_hacking off your hair in your new squeeze's bath— is not the behaviour of someone who knows how to get their feels out the normal way."

"I know." Holly sighs.

"So you know, just give her a minute. She'll call. And when she does, cut her some slack, okay? At least she'll be trying."

"Okay," Holly replies, slightly hurt by the thought that Lisa thinks maybe she _wouldn't_ cut Gail some slack.

But has to admit—to herself— she is also reluctantly grateful, because she hadn't really thought about what she'd asked for as a _demand_ on Gail. She hadn't intended it like that at all.

"It _will_ be okay, Holly," Lisa tells her.

"I hope so."

Holly shakes her head, leaning back and staring into the fluorescent glare of the lab lights.

How does this even happen? How is Lisa so annoyingly meddlesome but also so wonderfully … _Lisa_? She does she manage to pull off being so instrumental in this monumental fuck up, which largely happened because _she_ decided to get drunk and bring out the worse of her snob act— but now she manages to come over all protective of Gail? And maybe be a little bit right, too?

Holly sighs.

She has never been able to fathom this aspect of Lisa. She can be so, so wrong— or do something incredibly insensitive, like she did that night. But then after apologising and bouncing back, she still has the balls to assume she can have a say in it. And as much as Holly would like to tell her to back off, she won't, because the things that make Lisa such a pain in the ass sometimes are also the things that make her invaluable when things are going pear-shaped. She can be so incisive. And she possesses this ability to see what Holly can't always see in a situation.

And, annoyingly, for every time she is as incredibly wrong as she was that night, making her reflex judgments about something she doesn't know anything about, there have been so many times when she has been right. Some of the hardest truths of Holly's life have come from Lisa. And she has been forced to be grateful for a lot of them in the end, no matter how long it took to get there.

"Anyway, enough of that. You sound miserable," Lisa notes. "How was your day?"

"Okay," Holly shrugs as Bette sticks her head in the doorway, a questioning look on her face. Holly nods and holds up five fingers. Bette smiles and gives her a thumbs up and disappears. "Quiet. C and Ds mostly. You?"

"Okay. Two rhinos and a graft. Doing anything tonight?"

"Nope," Holly shakes her head. "I'm going to have a quick drink with Bette and then go straight home and sleep."

"Okay, well I was going to see if you wanted to go to a party … "

"No parties," Holly interjects, automatic.

"Don't worry," Lisa teases, "I said I was_ going_ to ask you, but now I see you currently prefer depressive behaviours to socialising."

"Ha. Ha," Holly says, yawning. But sad or not, all she wants to do with this Friday night is read her book and sleep. It's been that kind of week.

"But," Lisa continues, "I did also call to remind you about that thing at Audrey's on Sunday afternoon."

"I know. I haven't forgotten," Holly tells her, making a mental note to get something to take for the kids tomorrow.

"Yeah, I was going to see if you wanted to ride together? Then at least one of us can drink through all that Mommy talk."

Holly smiles. It's true. With Audrey's crowd, there is bound to be a lot of chitchat about potty-training and terrible toddlers and errant fathers on Sunday.

"I'll drive," Holly offers, knowing Lisa hates these things.

"Really? Well I won't say no," Lisa laughs.

"Sure. Anyway, I better go," Holly says through a yawn. "Bette's waiting for me."

"Okay, well see you. And don't worry," Lisa advises. "After what she said to you in the lab last week, Gail is _going_ to call. I bet money on it. She's just taking her time getting there."

"Hmm," is all Holly says to this assertion. She really, really hopes so, though.

"And when you do see her, Holls, do me a favour?" Lisa asks

"What?" Holly sighs, thinking maybe she's met her threshold on Lisa advice for the day.

"Can you tell her that your best friend _know_s that she is a judgemental bitch for me?"

Holly laughs, tipping her head back. Just another reason why she loves her friend— she's never afraid to admit it when she is in the wrong.

"I'll tell her sorry for myself when I see her one day," Lisa sighs. "But just tell her that from me for now, okay?""

"If I see her, I will tell her," Holly says, still smiling. "And I think she'll enjoy hearing that."

"Yeah, I can imagine she will," Lisa drawls. "See you Sunday."

"See you," Holly says, hanging up her phone and putting it in her pocket, feeling a touch more optimistic than she was before this conversation.

She scoops up her bag, flicks off the light in the lab and marches away, glad to see the back of the place for a couple of days.

* * *

**II**

_Fuck._

The realisation that she has left her phone on the kitchen counter, and that it is now ringing loudly is enough to make Holly swear for the third time today.

And Holly doesn't swear much, largely because her parents so arduously trained her out of it when she was younger. It was easy to do. Any time she so much as uttered the word 'damn', let alone anything worse in their company, her mother or father made her come up with a more adequate, precise word or phrase to describe what she had meant. It was so stupidly irritating it actually worked.

But sometimes, like now, only a curse will do.

Because now, confronted with the fact she will have to hobble all the way back across the few feet of floor from her sofa to the kitchen counter if she wants to know who is calling is enough to make her swear out loud.

And by the time she has limped back over there it has stopped ringing, of course. She picks it up anyway, and shuffles back to the couch, wincing, flicking on a lamp to counter the early evening shadows on her way.

She flops down across the cushions, feeling a small rush of adrenalin shoot through her as she sees the name on the screen. She lifts her leg and places her foot gingerly along the back of the couch and dials her number immediately.

It rings a few times, and just as Holly is starting to dread being greeted by voicemail, it picks up.

"Hey," Gail's voice comes down the line, a question in her tone.

"Hi." Holly says, clutching the phone tightly, but trying to sound light. "You just called, right?"

"Yeah, I just finished work and I went to drop your scarf back to you at the lab, but you weren't there. And then the guy at the desk said you were out sick," Gail explains. "I just thought I'd ring and see if you were, you know, alright?"

"I'm fine," Holly sighs. "Just a small case of broken toe."

"What?" Gail spits out.

"Yeah," Holly smiles, still not even close to being resigned to this absurd and maddening injury herself. "Ridiculous, huh?"

"How'd that happen?"

"How it happened," Holly sighs. "is that a very small person dropped a very heavy object on my foot."

"Ouch," Gail says. "And so, what? You're at home, being all limpy?"

"Yeah, I had to go to a doctor this morning, which is ridiculous in itself, being that I _am_ a doctor," Holly grumbles. "Just to get him to say whether I can work on it."

"And can you?"

"He says I should wait at least three days. But there is no way in hell I am not working for that long," Holly frowns.

She says that. But she is already wondering how she's going to deal with the pain, though. Just shuffling to the counter hurts, even on painkillers. Standing at the lab all day will not be easy.

"Well, hey, I can, uh, drop the scarf around to you if you like," Gail says, slightly hesitant. "I'm in my car right now. If you're not busy or whatever," she adds hurriedly.

"Sure. Believe me, I am _not_ busy." Holly tells her, sighing ruefully, but feeling her heart quicken slightly at the prospect of Gail's company. "I'm just sitting here on my own with my stupid broken toe," she sighs, frowning at the offending appendage.

"Okay, well, I'll be over soon. Do you need anything? I can bring around some food or something, if you want."

"Uh … " Holly pauses, surprised by the offer. She hadn't wanted to get too hopeful that Gail might stick around on this spontaneous little visit.

"It's not a marriage proposal, Holly," Gail says, sighing, mistaking her pause for hesitation. "It's greasy Chinese food."

"I know that," Holly says quickly. "Sure, that would be great."

"Okay, you want that noodle thing? And dumplings?"

"Sounds good," Holly smiles. They were barely together long enough to establish any kind of real patterns or routines, but they have known each other long enough now that Holly could walk into any dumpling or noodle place and be able to order for Gail, and vice versa.

"Okay, I'll see you soon. With food," Gail tells her, hanging up.

Holly puts her phone down on the coffee table, smiling and shaking her head. This is not what she was expecting of this evening at all, and in such a good way. She delicately lifts her foot off the back of the couch and gets up again; limping to the door and unlocking it. Then she grabs her ice pack from the refrigerator before going straight back to the couch.

As she repositions her foot and places the icepack over it, she feels a dull ache course through her little toe. It will be time to take some more painkillers before she eats, she guesses. She lies back against the cushions and contemplates her foot. What a _stupid_ thing to have happened.

It was one of those heavy, round glass paperweights. Clementine, determined to show 'Aunty Holly' the magic crystal ball before she went home, had it clasped in her chubby little hands, showing Holly the flower encased in the thick, solid glass. Next thing Holly knew it was landing on her socked foot, accompanied by a blinding flash of pain.

Holly hid the pain in her expression so well that Clem, more worried about rushing to pick up the paperweight and put it back before she got caught dropping it didn't even notice, But it was minutes before Holly could even speak, let alone reassure Clem's mother she was okay. And she thought it was okay, too. Probably just bruised, she told herself as a pervasive ache set in on the way home. And by the time she went to bed last night she knew it was probably worse than bruised. But still, how could something so damn small hurt so damn much?

So the first thing she did when she hobbled into the lab this morning was to find Brett and the x-ray machine and get a picture of the damn thing. And yep, they could both see it as clear as day, a teeny hairline fracture in her little toe.

And seeing that x-ray was the first time Holly cursed. And all Brett could do was smile sympathetically. The second time was after being told by the new boss, unable to miss the distinct limp in Holly's gait, that she had to get cleared to work. That time was under her breath.

And now here she is, anchored to her couch by the stupidest, most inconvenient injury she has ever had.

But maybe it is not so bad now because it means Gail is coming over.

_Gail's coming over_, she tells herself again. This is a good thing, right? Of course it is. It tells her that whatever it is delaying Gail's wanting to have that drink with her, to have that conversation, doesn't mean she doesn't want to see her or be around her.

* * *

**III**

"I don't care what he says about the pain, I'm going to work tomorrow." Holly announces, leaning over the back of the couch and watching Gail open and close drawers in the kitchen, collecting plates and glasses.

"Okay, Ms Macho," Gail teases idly, plucking cutlery from the drawers. Then she stops, pauses, and raises her head, thoughtful. "Or just too geeky to miss work for anything less than mandatory bed rest? I can't decide," she says, going back to the task at hand.

Holly can't help smiling at the return of the Gail sass. And she also can't help enjoying the sight of Gail in her home again. It's been a long time since she has watched Gail make herself wilfully at home in her place, as she was usually wont to do, even from the earliest days of their friendship.

Holly still remembers the first time she ever came over, ostensibly to hang out and watch movies one night, back in that early friendship period when they were just starting to spend relentless amounts of time together. She remembers how Gail swaggered inside as if determined to be comfortable in a new situation, then proceeded to make herself right belligerently at home, gazing at her surroundings and making openly envious comments about cashed-up doctor's houses.

Holly remembers how she had pulled herself up to perch on the counter, watching Holly cook, swinging her feet and peering around the room asking questions about whatever struck her to ask about what she was seeing around her; about a picture on the wall, or how much television she watched, or whether Holly actually consumed all the fruit in the bowl at the table or if it was just for appearances.

And later, when she finished her food, eaten at the kitchen counter, she simply gathered up their plates without saying anything and, while Holly finished telling her whatever story she was telling her, Gail put them in the sink and then wandered over and flopped on one of the armchairs, hands over her stomach, legs hiked up over the arm like it was her own place, still listening.

And Holly liked her even more than she already did for it. She likes people who are just willing to make themselves at home, something Gail did with her special brand of bullish charm. It saves the effort of making them feel at ease. And Gail certainly needed no such effort. Not here, and not with Holly, anyway. She has to wonder now, of course, if Gail would be like that with just anybody, or if it was for her only.

"Well," Gail concedes, coming over with her arms piled with plates and cutlery and take away cartons. She sits on an armchair at the far end of the table, putting everything down with a clatter. "You might as well see if you can tough it," she agrees. "My yoga teacher broke her toe once. She stubbed it on a street kerb or something, and _she_ was teaching class again three day later. Doing all the poses and everything." she says, pulling a face and passing Holly an empty plate and a one of the cartons. "But then, she was _super _tough because she used to be a ballet dancer. Those chicks are hardcore," Gail says admiringly, "Don't let the tutus fool you," she drawls, heaping some dumplings onto her plate and liberally pouring dipping sauce right over them.

"And you're saying forensic pathologists can't withstand that kind of pain?" Holly asks her, grinning and scooping out some noodles onto her plate.

"I don't know," Gail picking a snow pea out of a container and chomping on it. "Maybe," she shrugs, insouciant.

"And, more importantly_, you,_ who hates exercise, had a yoga teacher?" Holly asks her, exchanging dig for dig. But she _is_ curious. She didn't pick Gail for a yogi.

"Yeah, it was a thing," Gail mutters, exchanging Holly's steaming carton of noodles for her stir-fry, dismissing the question with a flick of her chopsticks. "A three week thing. If that."

Holly just smiles and nods. "Right."

And with that, Gail picks up the remote control, flicks on the news and turns in her seat toward the television. She pulls her feet up on the chair with her, balancing her plate on her knees and begins to eat in earnest, staring at the screen.

And Holly knows better that to try and distract her from the task of eating, or from her task of appearing comfortable. Instead she simply enjoys the fact that Gail is sitting in her living room making normal again, and attacks her own meal.

Right near the end of the local news they show a story about a party a high school party on the weekend, a party that had gotten so out of control after being advertised on social media that half of Toronto's police force had to show up to clear thousands of kids out.

"I am so glad I wasn't working on Saturday night," Gail sighs, putting her empty plate down on the table. She stretches her arms out above her head, arching back over the arm of the chair, still staring at the screen. "I heard there were masses kids swarming all over the neighbourhood, trying to get away when all the cops showed up. They were just driving around, plucking them off the streets."

"Wow," Holly laughs. "The kids of today," she says witheringly— maybe only half-joking. And that, of course, makes her feel old.

"Oh I can remember jumping a few back fences in my time," Gail smiles, turning and piling up their plates. "But I _really_ had to avoid trouble with the cops."

"Of course," Holly agrees, smiling. It can't have been any fun having police parents. Not that it seems that great for Gail now. But it would have been worse as a teenager.

"And there were definitely a few close calls," Gail sighs.

"I don't think I've _ever_ even been to a party where police showed up," Holly tells her, popping a painkiller from the bubble pack and washing it down with her water.

"What, _never_? Not even at uni?" Gail raises an eyebrow.

Holly shakes her head. "I don't think I ever even _spoke_ to a cop until I started doing forensics."

"Wow," Gail says, yawning and running her hands through her hair, making it stand on end. Holly smiles. She looks so young when she does that.

"Gail, I didn't do anything even remotely bad _ever_. I didn't raise my head from my textbooks until my early twenties, you know. And earlier, I was like this weird, self-sheltered child. Do you know, in my first couple of years at university my parents used to _tell me_ to go out?"

Gail smirks, leaning against the arm of her chair and resting her cheek on her hand and staring at her. "That's really, really sad, Holly."

"I know," Holly agrees, sighing. But then she smiles. She likes it when Gail says her name.

"Oh well," Gail says, resuming her task of clearing the table. "I'm afraid that's the price you have to pay for knowing lots of stuff, though, missing out on a misspent youth." She picks up the pile of dishes and stands, smiling down at her. "And I don't want to make you jealous or anything, but it _was_ kind of fun while it lasted."

"I bet it was," Holly sighs, thinking of all the those weekend nights spent furiously studying with her friends in the library, or some crappy late night café, ruing missing out on the lives they saw all the other students around them furiously living while they busied themselves committing diagnostic criteria and cell features to memory instead. Back then quality time with friends and things like dates happened in hours squeezed between lectures and study sessions and frantic cramming for tests and labs.

She watches Gail picks up the pile of dirty dishes and take them back to the sink.

"No wonder it took me so long to figure out I was a lesbian," Holly muses. "Kind of hard to notice while you're buried under a pile of textbooks."

"I don't know what my excuse is then," Gail says, cheerful, clattering around in the sink.

Me either," Holly tells her, grinning. "You never even got in a drunken make-out with a girl in at one of these parties?" she asks playfully, eyebrows raised, even though she already knows the answer.

"Nope. Never." Gail says. "Not even close."

"Too bad for you," Holly teases.

But then she frowns thoughtfully as she lies back down against the cushions, out of sight. She has to admit she is surprised to hear Gail respond that way to her initial comment. It's the first time she's heard her say anything even close to categorical about her sexuality. Not that she cares, either way, how Gail categorises herself. But she's curious to know if there have been changes in her perception of herself. It's interesting to think Gail has maybe been thinking about it, possibly labelling herself one way or another.

She knows that this mood they have found tonight together is too delicate though, for her to be asking about thing like that. Not yet. Hopefully one day soon— in whatever form they find themselves in— she'll feel like she is able to ask questions like that again.

She wonders how she'd feel, seeing Gail with another woman. She has to admit, that day in the lab, after Chris made that disarming comment about Gail going to see a girl, Holly, later wondered if she'd be more or less or the same amount of upset if it was a guy Gail had been going to see. She doesn't know exactly why it should matter, but somehow she knew it was worse if it was a woman.

She suddenly realises there is no sound coming from the kitchen. She pulls herself up and peers over the back of the sofa again.

Gail is now standing silently in front of the fridge, drying her hands on a kitchen towel and looking at a photo fixed there of Holly playing with Audreys' kids in the snow from a party a while back, handed to her on the weekend. Finally she turns, tossing the towel down on the counter and wandering back the living room, looking kind of aimless and like she is deciding what to do next.

"So how was _your_ day, anyway?" Holly asks quickly, trying to distract her in case she thinks of leaving. Now she has her here and they have found some of their old comfortable ground with each other, Holly feels compelled to keep her here a while longer. It doesn't even matter that they are not talking about the thing that needs to be talked about. Not at all.

Besides, it isn't as if she has any kind of clue whether talking was any part of Gail's plan for the evening, or if she really was just dropping off a scarf to the lab that happened to end in this unplanned dinner. And she doesn't want to pressure Gail into talking about anything before she is ready. Especially not after the way Lisa framed Gail's possible thought process for her. She hadn't realised what kind of burden of expectation she might have placed on Gail by asking her to cough up her feelings, all this time later. She had just been hoping to find a way for them to see if they could get past all of this. And she'd thought letting Gail say what she might have wanted to say that night might be the way. She thought she was giving something _back _to her, not demanding something of her.

So she asks Gail about her day both because she wants to know, but also because she simply wants her here without feeling any pressure other than to just _be_.

And because Holly has missed just being around her, too. She's missed the easy flow of the two of them, the flow they always seem to find again.

"Boring. Desk duty." Gail shrugs, perching on the arm of her chair.

"Oh come on," Holly chides. "That's all you've got? No tales of criminal ridiculousness for me?"

"Well Holly, I didn't exactly know I would be hanging out with you tonight. I thought I was just dropping off a scarf at the lab," Gail retorts. "Otherwise I would have prepared some entertainment for your crippled amusement. Do you want another tea?" she asks, pointing at Holly's cup

Holly nods. "Sure, and thanks," she says suddenly, and then flushes a little. "Thanks for coming over, I mean," she adds hastily. "I was feeling pretty stupid and sorry for myself."

"You're welcome," Gail replies, offhand, verbally waving away the gratitude.

Instead of moving, though, she just stays where she is, crossing her arms over her chest and smiling at Holly with a simple, frank smile. And Holly smiles right back. And they just stay there a minute, suspended in this moment of unabashed, distanced affection, their fluency recalled. Holly draws in a slow inward breath. God, she's missed _this_ Gail.

"And don't worry," she teases, as Gail finally steps forward to collect her cup. "You are always entertaining, Gail, even when you're not trying,"

"Well don't you worry, Holly," Gail sasses, pausing next to her. "I suppose you're _kind of_ cool despite the geeky youth."

"And you're kind of sweet for a former delinquent," Holly counters.

"Well, okay then," Gail says simply, bending down to collect the cup.

And all it takes is the insouciant flick of her eyes as she says those words, catching Holly's eye just as she is a foot or so from her own, looking at her with that faintly taunting smile. And then there is the barely perceptible but unbearably familiar whiff of her perfume as she reaches for the cup. And all Holly can do is yank in an involuntary breath. And then, before she even knows what she is doing, she has a hand wrapped around Gail's wrist, holding her there in front of her.

And Gail just looks at her. She doesn't break her gaze, but her expression is impassive, inscrutable. She gives Holly no cue or clue. It doesn't matter because for once, Holly has no idea how to stop what she's started.

And before she can apply some much-needed logic or question the move, she pulls Gail closer, until she is near enough to draw a hand around the back of her neck, to pull her in and to kiss her.

And Gail submits to the kiss, pressing her lips on Holly's for a fleeting moment. But just as quickly she draw her head her back, far enough to meet Holly's eye.

She doesn't say it, but it doesn't matter, Holly can hear the dubious, 'really? We're doing _this_?' in the draw of her eyebrow and in questioning curl of her mouth.

But Holly doesn't answer the silent question. She can't, because that would require considering the question, considering why the question is being asked. And now Holly is in no mood for thinking, not when Gail is in such close, intoxicating proximity.

Gail looks away for a split second, pursing her lips slightly. And then, within a moment too short for actual contemplation, she pulls in a breath and lets it out with a resigned sigh, turning back to Holly and answers the gentle demand of the increased, pressure Holly is exerting on the back of her neck with a kiss.

* * *

**IV**

"No, probably not your best move, Holly," Lisa says blithely from her seat across the living room, the same seat that held Gail the other night. She shakes her head, poring over the paper she is reading. "Not right now, anyway."

"I know," Holly sighs, resting her head in her hand, feeling the prick of tears at her eyes. "Thanks."

But she is totally right. It _wasn't _her best move. Not at all.

She can blame it on the drowse of the painkillers, or the sudden discomfiting proximity of Gail, or even the lull of them being so comfortable together again, but whatever it was, she wishes it she hadn't felt it. At least, she wishes she hadn't _acted_ on it in that way.

And once it started it all happened so quickly, too, as if it were just an urgent, fierce scratching of an itch, one that didn't even allow time for clothes to come off. Holly doesn't even recall much with clarity, except that first tantalising feel of skin as Gail finally put down the cup she was still somehow holding and climbed over her on the couch. That was when Holly, impatient, slid her hands straight up the back of her sweater. The heat of Gail's skin recalled her to that first time, after she'd teasingly submitted her to that cold shower, hauling her into sobriety and the moment. It reminded her of how, as they feverishly and awkwardly removed their clinging half-soaked clothes, the topography of her bared skin shifted between tracts of water-chilled cold and radiantly warm, an unexpectedly pleasurable cocktail of sensations under Holly's exploring hands.

That first time in the bathroom had been hectic and urgent and fun, turning to sweet and lingering and exploratory later as they acquainted themselves further with each other in the comfort of Holly's actual bed. This time— in sharp, painful contrast— was hurried and slightly desperate and worse, disconnected from _them_ somehow. It somehow became about bodies and biology and release, and nothing about the people involved.

And then it was over.

Holly feels the rising threat of tears again, chewing on her lower lip as she recalls that lovely night turned awful.

Trying to distract herself, she turns and watches Lisa flick over the page of her journal, shift into a more comfortable position on the armchair, one leg crossed over the other, and continue to read. She is no help in the distraction department. She is completely engrossed. She has always been like that, so completely absorbed, she forgets she's in company.

Holly pushes up her glasses and rubs her hands wearily over her face. She has not slept well these last few nights. Adjusting the ice pack over her foot, she frowns at her bandaged toe. Four days on, and the pain has subsided for the most part, leaving her with just a dull ache at the end of each day when she has been on her feet for so long.

She tips her head back against the back of the couch, staring blankly at the ceiling, her mind returning to that night, cruelly repeating on her in the way it has been almost constantly these last few days.

The worst part was afterward.

The minute it was over, Gail pulled back, calling the moment to an end.

She put immediate distance between them, clambering off Holly and sitting on the sofa next to her legs, running her hands through her messy blonde hair.

Then she just kind of smiled briefly at her. But it was not a smile she was handing out for free, but a smile that conceded a smile was necessary because they'd just had what was unexpected and possibly ill-advised sex.

Then Holly felt a wave of regret wash over her, urged by the way Gail immediately removed their physically proximity, and watched her as she matter-of-factly reached back behind herself and quickly did up her bra and then mechanically pulled her sweater back down to meet the hem of her jeans, not even taking a minute to linger in this moment, a moment where in the past she probably would have been stripping herself of any remaining clothing, ready for more, or at least lining her body alongside Holly's, taking decadent shelter in the aftermath.

Not now. No this time.

Holly yanked her own t-shirt down, pulled her knees to her chest, and watched silently as Gail leaned back slightly, zipped and buttoned her jeans, and then smoothed her hands down her thighs, arranging herself tidily again before flashing another small, painfully perfunctory smile somewhere in the direction of Holly. It was if she was the host at a dinner party, politely and silently smoothing over an awkward moment in conversation.

Holly recalls how queasy she felt watching Gail decide how she needed to manage this moment, and then do it in such a painfully polite, distanced way. It was so excruciating. And Gail was so strangely static. The thing about Gail— something that Holly noticed about her very early on— is that even when she is motionless, she is never _still._ You can always feel and see the endless internal commotion if you pay attention. But in that particular moment, sitting there on the couch a polite distance from her, it was like Gail wasn't allowing herself to think or feel.

What made it even worse was that she didn't physically leave then, either, although she was already half-gone in every way that counted. Instead she picked up the abandoned cups, and took them back to the sink. Then she rinsed out the dinner plates, put them in the dishwasher and threw away the rubbish while Holly sat there watching her, unable to think of a single thing to say that might rescue this night, this night that she already knew was probably un-recoupable.

Then, when she was finally done, Gail came over to the couch, standing behind it, arms folded over her chest.

"So do you need anything?" she asked quietly. "Will you be okay getting upstairs on you own?"

Holly shook her head, instantly noting how she worded so that it was clear she did not expect to stay.

Staying the night— let alone a minute longer— didn't seem to even be a question. Not that it would have been the greatest idea— or in this circumstance Holly would necessarily have thought it might happen. It was jarring; still, the way Gail was being so careful to communicate her expectations. Or lack thereof. There was no question mark over whether she should depart from this moment.

That first time, after the haircut, she hadn't asked. That was because when they finally did let go of each other long enough to rest, they both fell instantly downward into the kind of abandoned sleep a person can have only after a day like that. There was no time for such a question.

The next time though, some nights later, as Holly set her alarm for work the next morning, Gail had lifted herself onto her elbow and asked hesitantly, as if curious of the protocol, "should I … go?"

But all it had taken was for Holly to turn and drag her back down against the pillows and to tell her, laughing, "Don't you dare."

And after that she never asked again. And Holly never wanted her to.

But that wasn't a question that even entertained the notion of being asked on this night.

And in answer to Gail's pointed question, Holly shook her head.

"No thanks," she said quietly, attempting a smile through the wall of hurt. "I'll be fine."

"Okay … well … I better get going," Gail told her, folding her arms and looking down at her. "I'll see you soon."

"Okay," Holly nodded, her throat already slightly choked, still so alarmed by this distance Gail was still working so carefully to rebuild between them.

Nothing about that response was Gail's style. Not as Holly has ever known her, anyway.

"And ... thank you," Holly adds. "For dinner."

"You're welcome," Gail says softly, an echo of half an hour ago, arms still folded. Then she just looks at her a beat longer, her lips pressed into a thin line, her eyes a stillness, before delivering another faint smile and turning on her heels.

"Good night," Holly heard her say, a moment before the door closed.

And left there on the sofa in her suddenly bereft living room, Holly tried her damnedest not to cry.

Why had she so clumsily— so stupidly— destroyed that weirdly tentative but lovely place they found themselves that night, lingering somewhere between broken and mended, but _okay_? Why did she force it further?

Where they had been before she recklessly pulled her into a kiss was not a place of perfection, but at least it was somewhere they were _together_, and some place where it seemed like _they_ might be a possibility again. Now, with Gail's reaction, she doesn't know what kind of damage she has inflicted on that chance.

And while she knew that her heedlessness, her non-decision to react to their tentative re-connection with lust, was a mistake, at first she hadn't been able to fathom quite _why_.

Well there was the fact that she'd left the ball in Gail's court, but then suddenly taken it back. But she knew Gail's reaction had to be more than just about that shifting of power. The delicious tug-of-war that has existed between them so far, emotionally, sexually _and_ romantically has always swung back and forth easily, with equal amount of unexpected push and pull on either side.

She knew it was more than that.

Then later, as she showered and readied herself for bed, and she let her mind roam back to that night when everything fell apart at the bar, she remembered with sharp clarity Gail's parting, retaliatory shot at her about them "just having fun".

And at that bitter remembrance, Holly sank on to the edge of her bed, towel over her face, frowning.

What had she done? What idea did she just communicate— or perhaps perpetuate— to Gail about how she views them?

Instead of talking, or just being with her, letting her know she would wait until Gal was ready, until whenever she needed to be ready, she'd elided all that, skipping to the one thing that had always been easy between them. Too easy.

Really, it hadn't even been about sex, she realises, but just a desire to touch her, to feel her _with_ her, to fortify the connection they were starting to slowly feel again with physical affection. But it turned to something else so rapidly, before she could question the wisdom, because it turns out sex comes easier to them than anything else does right now.

But how could Gail know what Holly's actual intentions were driven as much by an emotional need for Gail than anything else?

And, as she realised the possible depth of her mistake, Holly kept her face pressed into her hand, wincing.

And even now, four days later, she feels like doing exactly the same thing in reaction.

Has she blown it? Did she tell Gail again, however inadvertently, without using words, that she really is only interested in some superficial physical level of engagement with her? Because that is not possible with Gail. Not for Holly. But now she realises Gail needs to know that.

"You know, I don't know what it is with you, Holly," Lisa says, looking up from her reading and shaking her head, clearly noticing that all the while she has been reading Holly has been busily wallowing more deeply in her misery.

"What do you mean?" Holly sighs, lifting her glasses and rubbing her eyes again. They feel bruised with tiredness today.

"With everything else in your life you have got to be one of the most enviably logical and calm and patient people I have ever known. About nearly everything. Then sometimes, with this stuff, you just seem to go all fools rush in."

"I know," she sighs again. It _is_ a terrible habit.

"And that, my friend, is how you end up kissing straight girls in cloakrooms," Lisa smiles, placing the journal on the arm of the chair and uncrossing her legs. "Or turning around and trying to date someone new while the wounds are still fresh from the last one. And that's how you end up giving in to your hormones on the couch instead of having the required conversation or just being freaking patient when you know you should."

Holly doesn't say anything. What can she say? She knows Lisa is right. Again.

"Now, you know I am all for no-strings sex, but there was no way that was going to be no-strings. Not with Gail. Not now."

"I _know_," Holly says again, a Greek chorus all on her own. "And I didn't mean it to be, anyway. I just kind of … did it. But now I am so scared _she's_ going to think that is all it was, that I was just treating us like something casual."

"Yeah, well, she just might." Lisa sighs, looking up from the journal.

"Oh God," Holly sighs, looking up at the ceiling.

"So you probably need to let her know it wasn't."

"I do," Holly agrees, nodding slowly, eyes still fixed to the ceiling, wondering just how receptive Gail will be to that conversation.

"You know, I can't believe _I_ am advocating a masses of feelings talk, but you _need_ to let her talk to you," Lisa chides, getting up and going into the kitchen. "You _needed_ to talk to her."

"I _know_ that, Lisa," Holly retorts, almost terse— the closest she's come to snapping at her friend in a long time. "It was a stupid, stupid mistake."

"Yeah it really was," Lisa agrees. "Coffee?"

* * *

**VI**

Later that night, when Lisa is gone, Holly sends her a message.

_I'm sorry. That was not us having a conversation. _

The response doesn't come for a few hours, when she is lying in her bed, reading and thinking about turning her light off.

_I am well aware of that._

Holly reads the terse little message a few times, not sure how to take it. And then reads her own again. And with a flush, she realises her mistake. She sounded like she was chiding Gail, giving her a stern reminder of what they were _supposed_ to be doing. That was not what she meant at all. God, why has she become so terrible at communicating, right when she needs to be good at it?

But before she can write back and clarify, another message comes through.

_No, that was you getting lucky. Or me. Whatever._

And Holly feels a surge of relief. She knows this offhand flirtation is probably just Gail playing cool, in that insouciant way she does. But even the fact she wants to play it cool is a relief, because it means she wants something do with her still.

And Holly will take that as encouragement.

So she types her message back.

_It was definitely, definitely me._

She pauses, biting her lip, contemplating the message. Then she adds another sentence.

_I miss you so damn much._

That's about as straightforward and clear as she can get via text message. So then, without hesitating, she presses send and turns and flicks off her light, feeling slightly more hopeful than she did earlier.


	4. Chapter 4

**I**

Holly taps hesitantly on the door. She taps so quietly that it tells her just how worried she is that coming here unannounced was not a good idea. As if she didn't already know.

But it has been four days since Gail left her apartment bearing more resemblance to a polite, distant smiling stranger than the Gail she knows and wants back in her sights so badly. And it has been three days since she sent that message telling her much she missed her. And still no Gail.

And that return to radio silence means coming here unannounced _is_ a good idea. It has to be.

So she thrusts her hands in her pockets and chews on her lips and waits patiently, listening to the sounds of general shuffling and then footsteps approaching the other side of the door.

Finally the door opens a fraction and Dov's frowning face peers out. He smiles though, when he sees Holly.

"Oh, hey, I wasn't sure if someone was there or I was hearing things." He yanks the door open wider.

"Hey, I was … is Gail around?" she asks, feeling clumsy and weirder than she has in a long time.

"Yeah," he nods, looking at her, clearly curious about what she's suddenly doing her, late on a weeknight. "I think she's in her room."

He turns as if to call out, but Holly hastily puts her hand out.

"Uh, it's okay, I'll just go check, okay?" she mutters, already stepping in the door.

"Okay, well, you know where it is," he says, rubbing his face and trudging back into the living room.

Gail's door is closed. She can't hear anything from behind it, but there is a soft amber light spilling out from under the door.

Again she taps quietly, feeling increasingly apprehensive about this surprise visit. She already knows how much Gail hates surprises.

"What?" she hears Gail grumble from behind the closed door.

Holly can't help a quick amused smile. Yep, that's her Gail. Always ready with the welcome mat.

She doesn't say anything, though, just opens the door slowly and peers inside.

She is sitting on top of the covers, leaning against the wall, her socked feet stretched out on the mattress, a laptop resting across her thighs. At the sight of Holly, she frowns, placing her hands on the frame of the laptop screen, closing it gently.

"Hi," she says.

It's not a friendly greeting. But it's not exactly unfriendly, either. Instead it's a mutt-ish mix of dubious, confused, and the question, _what are you doing here_?

"Hey," Holly smiles, ignoring her discomfiture. "Can I come in?" she asks, already partly stepping inside.

Gail, clearly still thrown by her presence just moves her chin in one slight, uncertain up and down movement.

Holly decides treat that almost-nod as unequivocal consent and steps right inside, already unbuttoning her jacket. Then she points to the chair under the window.

"May I … ?"

Gail just nods again, still staring, one eyebrow cocked at her.

Holly slowly pulls off her jacket and hangs it over the chair, a deliberate indication that this is not to be a flying visit. Then she slowly sits and smiles, stretching her legs out in front of her and crossing her ankles.

"So, like you, I can be kind of impetuous, too," she says. Then she smiles ruefully at Gail, who is still busy with the task of adjusting to Holly's sudden presence. "In case you didn't notice," she adds.

"O-kay," Gail says slowly, lifting up the laptop and placing it on the bedspread next to her, resigning herself to the sudden change of scene. Then she simply pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her knees and guardedly waits for whatever it is that is coming.

Holly leans against the stiff wooden back of the chair, taking in a deep breath.

"So I started seeing someone else," she says, surprising even herself with this line of thought. She _thought_ she was going to talk about the other night: the couch, the rash, foolish sex and the ugly awkward aftermath. But no, here she is talking about Rita. But helpless to stop the flow now it has been released, she goes on, attempting to explaining herself via a tangent she only just realised she was on.

"You wouldn't answer my calls. I didn't even know if you were listening to my messages and then I met this woman randomly and she was great and she was interested and it had been so long since I'd heard from you I really thought it was over between us."

Gail just continues to stare at her, wrapping her arms more securely around her knees, pulling them closer to her chest, lips pressed together.

Holly smiles regretfully at her again, shaking her head slightly.

"But it was way too soon to be seeing someone. But because I am ridiculously impetuous sometimes too—because I didn't give myself a minute to think about it—I didn't actually factor in that just because we were, by all appearances, over, that I might not be anywhere near done _feeling_ about you. I thought that just because I _wanted_ to be, that I could be."

She notes the flicker in Gail's eye, the twitch in her lip as she says those words. And she feels the warmth spread through her chest at the knowledge that this is penetrating at least.

"And she was great," Holly continues. "Really great. But it was impossible. There was no room for her. And the stupid thing is I should have _known_ that already. I should have known it was unwise, but I did it anyway because I have a kind of terrible habit of just diving into things because I want them to work, because I want to distract myself." She shrugs. "Sometimes, _sometimes_ this recklessness can turn out to be a good thing, like when I kiss straight girls in cloakrooms," she adds wryly, thinking of Lisa's words the other day.

Gail's lips curl upwards in a brief suggestion of a smile.

"But most times," Holly continues sighing. "It's just … "

"Stupid?" Gail finally offers, with a small crinkle in her eyes, one that tells Holly she knows just how unhelpful her input is but does not care.

"Yeah," Holly concedes, shrugging and smiling. "Probably."

They just look at each other for a moment.  
Holly takes a deep, steadying breath.

"Can I ask you a question?" she queries.

Gail chews at her lip, those blue eyes still staring Holly down. Then she nods.

"Why were you _really_ not calling yet?" Holly asks, staring at her. "I mean I get maybe why you haven't called me this week— because I did _another_ impetuous, thoughtless thing that makes it kind of my fault you didn't …"

"I was there too, you know," Gail interjects.

"I know," Holly adds quickly, staring down at her hands, which are stretched taut against her knees. "I just— I don't know— you kept saying you were going to call, but then you wouldn't call and I was just wondering …" She looks back up at Gail. "Why?"

Gail leans head against the cream wall behind her, staring back, biting the inside of her lip, and taking her time as if deciding how to answer. Then she tips her head back a little, drags in a deep breath, and sighs.

"Performance anxiety," she suggests, shrugging and smiling slightly before it fades quickly to frown. "Like, if I don't say the right thing … I don't know …" she sighs and trails off.

She shuts her eyes, and Holly can see the long draw of her breath in the slow, deliberate up and down of her rib cage. Then she opens them, her gaze immediately returning to Holly, the helpless look on her face telling her that Gail has no idea how to even complete that sentence.

Holly smiles gently, feeling the inevitable wash of regret, that same feeling she has already felt way too many times these last few weeks. And she wants so badly to stop feeling like this.

So it _was_ performance anxiety. Another point for Lisa. She sighs.

"I figured maybe it was that," Holly admits softly leaning forward in her seat. "Well," she corrects. "It was pointed out to me." She lifts her arms, crossing them over her chest. "God, Gail, when I asked if you'd talk to me, I didn't want … " She pauses, and takes another deep breath, and starts again. "You know, I was just so relieved to see you again, and so hopeful that maybe we could be okay, when I asked if you'd explain yourself I was really just looking for a way to get you to talk to me again, not asking for some big speech."

Gail just nods, fiddling with her earring and staring at her, lips pursed.

"So, I'm sorry," Holly stammers. "Because I really didn't mean it as pressure _on you_. I just wanted to talk to you. T_hat's_ why I asked. And I thought it was your decision to make when that happened. But I really didn't mean it to seem like it was all about _you_ having to explain yourself to _me_."

Gail nods again. And Holly is relieved when she grants her a small smile, issued in recognition of what Holly is trying so desperately hard to articulate.

You know, it's not like _I_ don't have any explaining to do," Holly sighs, smiling at her. "So you know what? Let's take it in turns," she suggests, shrugging and hoping the ridiculousness of transforming such a critically necessary conversation into some weird game might be enough to release this moment into something relaxed enough that they can actually see it through.

"I asked you something, so now you ask me something," she instructs her, hopeful Gail will follow her lead.

And Gail just stares at her a long time, looking a little like a reticent but reluctantly interested animal, trying frantically to decide whether a tidbit offered is a treat or a trap before it makes its move.

Then finally she speaks.

"Why did you walk away that day, in the hallway?"

Holly lets out a breath. Well, that's a cracking start if ever there was one.

"I was really sad about us. And kind of angry with you," she said simply. "I was still angry for that silence, for your ignoring me, and for being weird all day and then for all of a sudden throwing your feelings at me. And I was angry with me too because I'd dug myself into this hole where the woman who'd hurt me was telling me the something I didn't even know yet that I most wanted to hear from her." She shakes her head. "And there was nothing I could do about it because I was late for a dinner with a woman I was quickly realising I had no business being with."

Gail looks at her for a beat and then lowers her chin and nods in the direction of her lap. She suddenly lets go of her knees, stretching her legs out in front of her again, before looking back up at her with a rueful smile.

"Well, I guess it's your turn, then."

Holly decides to hit straight back.

"How were you feeling the other night when you left my place?"

The response is just as quick.

"Like an idiot," Gail says simply.

Holly raises her eyebrows. "Why?"

"Because," Gail sighs. "Once again I was doing the hasty, stupid, self-destructive thing I always do, when I _should_ have been doing things the way that I know I probably need to be doing them." She smiles sorrowfully. "Like, you know, thinking _and_ talking, which for some reason is apparently easy for the rest of the world, but not for me."

Holly smiles at her, but takes in a deep, steadying breath. So many truths exchanged so soon. This night is already teetering on the brink of overwhelming, and they have only just started. But Holly also knows it needs to be that way right now. So she sits back, looking at Gail, expectant, ready for her turn.

"What about you?" Gail counters. "How did you feel?"

Holly tucks her hair behind her ear, smiling, glad of an easy one.

"Also like an idiot." she says. "And also because it was hasty and self-destructive and not what I wanted or needed to be doing right at that moment. Well," she adds quickly, "Of course I _wanted_ it, but it's not what I should have …"

And Gail just holds up a hand. "Stop. It's my turn again."

"It is? Why?"

"Because it is," she nods, aloof. "New rule, if you give the same answer, the first person gets to go again. You copied."

"Uh, _Okay_," Holly says slowly, eyebrows raised. Then she gives in to a smile. Typical Gail, making up the rules as she goes along. Ridiculous contrary rules. But who cares, really, as long as they are talking. If this wasn't all so damn hard, Holly might be giddy with the relief of it happening.

Gail leans forward, crossing her arms over her chest. Her expression is calm, but there is a ferocity in those crystalline blue eyes.

"Why did you tell your friend you were just having fun with me?" Her voice flattens out as she asks the question, the hurt from that night making itself known all over again.

Holly leans forward, asking the question she already knows the answer to.

"Is that's what upset you most? Hearing me say that to Lisa?"

And Gail just gives her a withering _of course_ look. But it melts a little as she holds Holly's gaze for a moment. Then she nods reluctantly.

"I think I was kind of shocked," she shrugs. "And I also felt really stupid. I mean, we hadn't talked about it at all, but I guess I felt like we were …"

She presses her lips together, halting her flow of words, rearranging them in her mind. Then she abruptly takes off on another tack.

"You know, when I got back together with Nick, I still fought so hard against it. I did everything I could to keep him at bay. Well, I pretty much do that with everyone," she says, half-shrugging again. "I did it with Chris, too. In fact, I think I did it with everyone I dated since that first time with Nick. I even do it with my friends." She takes a breath. "And then when I finally just caved and let Nick in, it was too late and he didn't even want to. He'd moved on. Again."

Holly just nods.

"Not that I regret it at all now, of course" Gail tacks on quickly, laughing a breathy laugh. "_Obviously_. But meeting you, I guess I just thought that because I had discovered someone who I _really _didn't want to do that with that of course they felt the same way. And then I felt really, really dumb when I realised I had just kind of assumed you were on the same page."

Holly just sits there for a moment, computing these truths.

This little rant is perhaps the most articulate thing she has ever heard from Gail about her emotional landscape, proof of what Holly has always suspected: that while Gail doesn't speak her feelings out loud that much, she _thinks_ them a lot.

And she also, in a slow trickle of awareness, realises now this is partly her fault. Because she should have realised this earlier. She just assumed Gail would know by her actions how invested she was in the two of them. But really, she has known this skittish girl long enough to know she lives enshrouded in some sort of unshakeable self-doubt when it comes to such things. She should have known to say it out loud, even that early.

Holly lifts her glasses, swipes her hand over her eyes and then sighs, wishing life wasn't made so crazy difficult by these little fault lines between people, by these failures to get what needs to be gotten _when_ it needs to be gotten. On both their parts. These last months could have been so different. _So_ different.

"Gail, for one, you got it wrong" she corrects her softly, smiling. "I didn't say I was _only_ having fun. I said I was having fun. And anyway, I said that to shut Lisa up. Because sometimes she really needs shutting up, in case you didn't notice, and because at that point what _we_ were was none of her business."

Gail concedes a bare, brief smile at that.

"And I _wa_s having fun with you," Holly says slowly. "Such incredible, amazing, stupid fun. But no, it wasn't just about that," she tells her.

She hold out her hands, shaking her head and smiling. "I mean tell me you could at least feel that a little, right?"

Gail casts her eyes down at her hand, nodding. Then she looks back again, doing that little quick sideways movement of her jaw she does when she's ruminating on something.

"I thought I could," she admits finally. "That's the thing— it hadn't even occurred to me until right at that moment that I might have been mistaking what we were for something more serious than it actually was. That's why I freaked out."

"You didn't ever listen to my messages did you?" Holly asks. "The ones I left after that night, telling you how much I missed you?"

Gail shakes her head, frowning. Then a small smile escapes around her regret. "I didn't erase them, though," she confesses.

"And what about now?" Holly asks, smiling at Gail's pathetic/cute confession. "Do you really think that I was just in it for fun?"

"That's not fair. It's my turn for a question." Gail tells her, calling out her own avoidance tactics with a wry grin.

"No, it's a two-part question," Holly argues, because she wants the answer now. "This is part two."

And Gail just shrugs, caving. She lays her hands palm up on her legs and stares at them.

"No," she admits quietly.

"Gail," Holly sighs. "You are hot and you are hilarious fun. In fact, you are significantly,_ ridiculously_ hot. And you are so much fun. And when I met you, I hadn't had such a good time in so long. But you know, it's not just about that. I could talk to you through a hole in a brick wall for hours and still never tire of it."

Gail shakes her head at that, her sarcastic grin spiralling into a mocking giggle.

"You're an idiot."

"Maybe," Holly shrugs, not even caring about the weakness of her analogy. Not if it gets her point across. "And the thing I am most upset about from the other night is that maybe I buried that particular lead by sleeping with you instead of letting you know that," she continues, chuckling inwardly at the realisation she is borrowing Chloe's expression from the other day. Gail would just _love_ to know that. "But also," she goes on. "I didn't want to bring it up, because I felt like I'd left it to you to decide when and how we talked, and I didn't want to be pushy about it."

Gail nods.

"But you should know," Holly says quietly. "And maybe I should have already told you, these are not just _fun_," she hangs air quotes around fun. "Feelings I am having for you. Not even close."

"Okay," Gail replies, offhand, nodding matter-of-factly as if they have just sealed a far more mundane, casual deal, perhaps over a sale of some second-hand good. Holly shakes her head and smiles. Gail is so frustratingly, endearingly contradictory sometimes.

"Are you done with your part B now, Holly?" Gail sasses. "Because I think it's my turn."

"Yes Gail," Holly sighs, grinning. "I'm done."

* * *

**II**

Holly wakes to the sight of a familiar/unfamiliar wall.

It takes her a minute to recall herself to the fact she is in Gail's room. That's mostly because she has never stayed here before, ever, and it's only vaguely familiar territory from brief visits to pick Gail up, or to collect something Gail needed. Gail always openly preferred Holly's place with its creature comforts, it privacy, and its distance from her gossipy flatmates. _Besides_, _I don't want to have to get dressed just to go get snacks from the kitchen_, Gail had pointed out one afternoon as they lay half-naked on the couch eating croissants and jam in the patch of sunlight streaming in the windows. And on those particular grounds, Holly happily conceded her place _was_ preferable.

She slowly rolls over onto her back, yawning and pulling herself into wakefulness, swiping a hand over her eyes before opening them.

She is immediately greeted with the sight of Gail sitting on the bed in the exact same position she found her last night, laptop on her lap, same clothes still on, chewing on a piece of buttered toast.

Holly smiles at the exquisitely familiar sight of her eating and lazing, suddenly, incredibly wakefully glad she didn't decide to leave here last night.

"I don't want you to leave," Gail had said in a small frowning voice when, during a lull in their game Holly had checked her watch and mentioned the late hour.

"I still have more things I want to ask," Gail told her, practically pouting.

"Me too," Holly had smiled, assuring her. She didn't want to go either. She just thought she maybe should.

"So stay," Gail had said, simply, staring at her.

And Holly knew straight away that the invitation mean only that. To stay. Nothing else. And that was all she needed anyway.

"Okay."

And she just got up out of that chair, kicked off her boots and without an invitation she knew she now didn't need, she climbed up onto Gail's bed and sat there next to her, assuming the exact same position as Gail, leaned against the wall, legs stretched out before her, ankles crossed.

"My turn then," she had said, smiling, turning to face her.

And Gail just gave her a wry smile back.

They talked for hours, long into the morning. It was a sprawling conversation, punctuated by their turn-taking questions, spinning out answers around the sweeping territories of their pasts, their future and the painful but ultimately possible now. And the later it got, the easier it became to speak their thoughts aloud.

And Holly doesn't even remember when they went to sleep. She just remembers the night wearing down into softer edges, mellowing into a new intimacy, one of the thoughtful out-loud kind they have never had a chance to have before.

They didn't touch, either. Not once. But it didn't matter. That was not what this night was for. And when she felt the compulsion to touch her, to reach out for her, Holly did not give in to it.

She did not give in to it because she felt like she had a point she really wanted to prove to Gail about what this night was about for them— about something that was more vital in this moment than anything else— even sex— could be. They will hopefully have plenty of time for the heady straits of their passion again. But last night was altogether a different beast. And maybe this talking thing comes a little easier to Holly than it clearly comes to Gail, but it is still not something she is used to having to do in such a way, or so overtly.

But she also didn't touch her because once they got started she actually did not want anything to interrupt this relentless, addictive flow of un-stemmed words back and forth between them, anyway. This conversation so full of honesty and small but necessary revelations that might see them forward. This filled her with more hope than anything has in a long time.

"I have another question, by the way." Gail suddenly says, through her mouthful, breaking into Holly's morning reverie.

"I bet you do," Holly smiles, reaching for her phone on the floor beside her and squinting at it, worried about the hour and work and the fact she will have to leave enough time to go home first.

Without even looking at her, Gail automatically reaches out with her free hand for the bed stand, returning with Holly's glasses. She holds them out in front of her.

"Thanks," Holly mutters, smiling and sliding them on, still reconciling herself to being awake. She pushes them up her nose and the world shifts immediately into sharp focus. So does the time on her phone. It's still early. She has plenty of time.

"Are you working today?" she asks Gail.

"Uh, I believe it's actually my turn to ask a question, Holly," she mutters, smiling at the screen.

"Well okay then, _sorry_," Holly chuckles, bunching the pillow up under her head and rolling on her side so she is facing Gail. "What was the question?"

"What's with Boob Job?"

Holly frowns. Boob Job? Oh. Then she smiles. Lisa. Of course. She is surprised this didn't come up earlier, frankly.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you," Holly smiles. "She has a message for you."

"What?" Gail asks, eyes narrowed, immediately cagy.

And fair enough, too.

Holly grins.

"She said to tell you that you should know that she knows she is a judgemental bitch."

Gail turns screwing up into a dubious half-smile.

"Really?"

"Yup," Holly sighs. "She can be a total asshole, but she _knows_ it. And she's actually really sorry for it, though she said she'd tell you that part herself one day."

Gail shakes her head. "I can't even imagine being friends with someone with that many rules. Someone _that _judgemental. Why are you even friends?" she asks, frowning.

Holly shrugs. "Because of all the awesome things you don't know about her."

Gail doesn't say a word to that.

"And you know, if she's really lucky, you'll still let her show you them one day."

At that, Gail pulls her best _as if_ face.

Not wanting Gail to get away with feeling completely righteous, Holly changes tack.

"You know," she says idly. "I hung out with Chloe for a while that day I saw you at the lab."

"So?" Gail sighs, drawing her eyebrows together and giving Holly a brief, suspicious sideways glance.

Holly smiles. "You know, she's pretty awesome," she says, watching Gail pointedly ignoring her. "The way you had described her I thought she was going to be awful or at least crazy and kind of … dim witted or something. But she's actually a sweetheart," Holly frowns. "And she's smart and she's strangely insightful. She said some things that …

Gail turns on her with a mutinous stare, but Holly just smiles and forges ahead.

"Well, let's just say she made some pretty astute observations about you."

"And I have not even the slightest desire to hear them, Holly" Gail tells her through gritted teeth.

"Okay, fine," Holly says blithely, turning onto her back. "All I'm saying is that she seems like a really cool person, and you seem to have kind of knee-jerk judged the hell out of _her_."

"Okay, Holly," Gail snarls. "I get the picture. Lesson learned. I'll give Lisa a chance. Now shut up."

"Just saying," Holly shrugs, chuckling.

"Well don't," she grumbles.

But she smiles as she turns back to the screen.

* * *

**III**

"I'll see you soon?" Holly says, smiling at her in the sun-dappled entryway of the flat.

And it really is a question.

"Of course," Gail nods, smiling at her, clasping her hands, which are tucked inside the sleeves of her over-sized jumper, together.

They look at each other, smiling shyly like two strangers who just did something unbearably intimate together and don't know how to say they'd like to do it again sometime.

But because she can't leave without touching her, can't resist punctuating the affinity built by this tender but brutally honest night with affection, Holly steps in, reaches an arm out and wraps it around Gail's neck, gathering her into a tight embrace. And Gail immediately, silently acquiesces, reaching under Holly's jacket and encircling her waist with her arms, resting her face on her shoulder, taking in a breath and letting it out in a long sigh. Holly smiles to herself, breathing in deeply and placing a hand in the space between her shoulder blades. She smoothes her palm in slow circles around that flat, warm span of upper back. And Gail's only response is to slide her arms tighter around her waist, drawing Holly closer to her and turning her face slightly into the crook of her neck, so Holly can feel the in and out flush of her warm breath against her skin.

Weakened slightly by the pleasure afforded by this embrace, and reluctant to relinquish it just yet, Holly leans back against the wall, feeling Gail automatically move with her, pressing her weight slight against her. She buries her face deeper into her neck, one of her hands sliding up Holly's back, over the length of her neck and then tangling itself into her hair. Holly shuts her eyes and breathes in the mellow, light scent of Gail, feeling almost slightly sick with relief and with the best kind of sleep-deprived fatigue.

Time ebbs around them slowly, but neither move, unwilling to abandon the tender intimacy of this moment to the tyranny of distance, or to the comparative tedium of the day ahead. Neither of them wants to let go of this night they have finally been able to have.

Holly hears the sound of a door opening and closing, and voices coming down the hallway. They are talking loudly, something about dogs and cats, and then they quiet almost instantly as the owners of the voices register the tangled form of Gail and Holly in the entryway. Gail doesn't even flinch, just stayed nestled in the cocoon of their embrace, running her thumb back and forth along the nape of Holly's neck. The chat dwindles to a tangibly conspiratorial silence as footsteps shuffle past them and into the kitchen. Then the voices start again, a hushed urgent whisper. Holly smiles.

"If only they knew I didn't even so much as remove my bra all night, maybe they wouldn't be so intrigued." Holly whispers in her ear, running a hand through her short, morning scruffy hair. "In fact, not even the socks came off."

And she feels the faintest shake as Gail laughs silently in her arms.

* * *

**IV**

Holly is yawning through some notes in the afternoon when the message comes.

_I know you were trying to prove some grandiose point by not jumping me last night. But don't you think maybe you took it a little too far by not even kissing me?_

Holly smiles and types an instant message back.

_No. No I don't._

Holly smiles, slipping her phone back in her pocket, almost able to see the withering glance Gail will be giving her phone right now.

But she doesn't. Not at all. They've got all the time now.

* * *

**Thanks for reading. I guess it's still being a thing. **

**Oh yeah, and I just recapped the whole Season 5 Gail/Holly storyline on my Tumblr. The linky is in my profile if you want to read.**


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